“First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.”

“Go where the pain is, go where the pleasure is.”

“Merciful death. How you love your precious guilt”

“I think to be this happy is to be miserable, to feel this much satisfaction is to burn.”

“Would that death were like this. Would that one would sleep and sleep and sleep forever.”

“I saw my real gods . . the gods of most men. Food, drink, and security in conformity.”

“I was good and bad, but never wicked.”