Perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
Impressive Notes From The Underground quotations
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.

I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.

A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.
I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. An unattractive man. I think that my liver hurts.
What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.
Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends.
Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.

To be too conscious is an illness. A real thorough going illness.
To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred.
Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.
One of the greatest learning experiences I had was hanging out with Maureen Tucker from the Velvet Underground. There's a woman who has no training and has a very simplistic and very tribal drumming style. I don't even know that she can even do a drum roll, but she's probably my favorite rock drummer because she plays every note perfect.