My best humor—I can perhaps call it my sarcastic vein—proves to me the best precisely because it manifests itself with maximum intensity at serious moments. I know well how Cioran felt: it is an irresistible impulse! This is why, relaxed, I may not feel instigated to joke. To make good jokes, I have to be in a solemn atmosphere; then they come out as if by automatism, if not necessity. And so I realize that in these Notes, which are light, calm, almost effortless, it is very rare to find evidence of my fatal inclination to clowning. But in my “serious” lines, where I put myself in a state of full concentration, where I extract from my heart what seems to me the purest truth, where—there is no denying it…— I often get myself, exactly like Cioran, to pour pessimism, despair and disenchantment on paper, then, precisely in these moments, also like Cioran, I have the feeling that it is almost a sin to waste them as a background for a crude joke. Unfortunately, I cannot change my nature…