A book is a postponed suicide.

Write books only if you are going to say in them
the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

Only what you hide is profound, is true.

Whence the power of base feelings.

In a work of psychiatry, only the patients' remarks interest me;
in a work of criticism, only the quotations.

No one approaches the condition of a sage if he has not had the
good luck to be forgotten in his lifetime.

A book is a postponed suicide.

 E.M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born