KARL KRAUS ON THE LIFE OF A MISANTHROPE

I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don’t say what it wants to hear.

If I return people’s greetings, I do so only to give them their greeting back.

Many desire to kill me, and many wish to spend an hour chatting with me. The law protects me from the former.

What torture, this life in society! Often someone is obliging enough to offer me a light, and in order to oblige him I have to fish a cigarette out of my pocket.

One’s need for loneliness is not satisfied if one sits at a table alone. There must be empty chairs as well. If the waiter takes away a chair on which no one is sitting, I feel a void and my sociability is aroused. I can’t live without empty chairs.