“In the solitude I entered, the norms of this world, if they subsist, do so in order to maintain a dizzying feeling of enormity: this solitude, it is God.”

“Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.”

“What I want? ...Even if it kills me, to yield to my desires, to every last one of them.”

“The desire burning in me was without conceivable limit, it was monstrous...”

“I don’t want your love unless you know I am repulsive, and love me even as you know it.”

“...desire reduces us to pulp.”

“Could I blame myself for a sin which attracted me, which flooded me with pleasure precisely to the extent it brought me to despair?”

“...desire for you is maddening me.”

“Sensual pleasure and death have the same dignity – and the same indignity – the same violence and nevertheless the same sweetness.”

“Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.”

“Laughter is more divine and in meaning more elusive than tears.”

“It seemed to me that her monstrous impurity, and mine, no less revolting, cried out to heaven and that they bore an affinity to God, inasmuch as only utter darkness can be likened to light.”