"Freedom and crime are so indissolubly connected to each other, like … well, like the movement of the aero and its velocity. When the velocity of the aero = 0, it doesn't move; when the freedom of a person = 0, he doesn't commit crime." (D-503)

"A magnificent celebration of the victory of all over one, of the sum over the individual!" (D-503)

"I had to find a way of eating up, of crushing down, that square root of minus one" (D-503)

"The Tables transformed each one of us, actually, into a six-wheeled steel hero of a great poem" (D-503)

"To unbend the wild curve, to straighten it out to a tangent - to a straight line" (D-503)

"You looked about you like an inspired mythological god on the seventh day of creation" (I-330 to D-503)

"Now poetry is no longer a brazen nightingale call. Poetry is a state service; poetry is purpose."

"Assuming that "I" has the same "rights" compared to the State is exactly the same thing as assuming that a gram can counterbalance a ton. Here is the distribution: a ton has rights, a gram has duties. And this is the natural path from insignificance to greatness: forget that you are a gram, and feel as though you are a millionth part of the ton…" (D-503)

"The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox…" (D-503)

"How could a government, even a primitive government, permit people to live without anything like our Tables - without compulsory walks, without precise regulation of the time to eat, for instance" (D-503)

"What difficulties our predecessors had in making music! They were able to compose only by bringing themselves to attacks of inspiration, an extinct form of epilepsy" (D-503)

"True, only about two tenths of the population of the globe did not die out. But how beautifully shining the face of the earth became when it was cleared of its impurities!" (D-503)

"...the One State began an offensive against the other master of the world—against Love. ... around three hundred years ago, our historical Lex Sexualis was proclaimed: "Each cipher has the right to any other cipher as sexual product." (D-503)