"It's sickening to see the workers bent over their machines, intent on giving them all possible pleasure, calibrating bolts and more bolts, instead of putting an end once and for all to this stench of oil, this vapour that burns your throat and attacks your eardrums from inside."
"A God who counts minutes and pennies, a desperate sensual God, who grunts like a pig. A pig with golden wings, who falls and falls, always belly side up, ready for caresses, that's him, our master."
"I listen to them become trombones, full orchestras, marshaling yards. You give in to noise as you give in to war. At the machines you let yourself go with three ideas that are wobbling about at the top of your head. And that's the end."
"Those who talk about the future are scoundrels. It is the present that matters. To evoke one's posterity is to make a speech to maggots."
"Neptune has finally wed Venus - even Gods can't screw around forever."
"In this world we spent our time killing or adoring, or both together. 'I hate you! I adore you!' We keep going, we fuel and refuel, we pass on our life to a biped of the next century, with frenzy, or any cost, as if it were the greatest of pleasures to perpetuate ourselves, as if, when all's said and done, it would make us immortal. One way or another, kissing is as indispensable as scratching."
"The poetry of heroism appeals irresitably to those who don't go to a war, and even more so to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy."