“I marvel at the placidity of the Utopian who imagines that man is perfectible. There is no denying that the human creature is born selfish, abusive, vile. Just look around you and see. Society cyni...”

“The heart, said to be man’s noblest organ, has the same shape as the penis, commonly supposed the most ignoble; the symbolism is not inappropriate, because the love which comes from the heart soon ...”

“Really, when I think it over, literature has only one excuse for existing; it saves the person who makes it from the disgustingness of life.”

“Art and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul.”

“To love at a distance and without hope; never to possess; to dream chastely of pale charms and impossible kisses extinguished on the waxen brow of death: ah, that is something like it. A delicious ...”

“We seem to assume that no one really wants to be a girl or a woman, and therefore some people, say female-bodied people, must be forced into these abject genders”

“The abject impulse is inalienably connected with the feminine, specifically the maternal. As it forms out of the undefined morass of relations, surfaces and currents that existed before the Oedipal...”

“By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were....Our creed is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (a...”

“Our creed [atheism] is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in...”

“By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were....Our creed is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (a...”