“Instead of accumulating wisdom, he has shed certainties. Instead of reaching out to touch someone, he has fastidiously cultivated his exemplary solitude. If he is an aphorist, he's one who resembles Nietzsche, not Kahlil Gibran.”—Edmund White, The New York Times
In this collection of essays and epigrams, E.M. Cioran gives us portraits and evaluations—which he calls "admirations"—of Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the poet Paul Valery, and Mircea Eliade, among others. In alternating sections of aphorisms—his "anathemas"—he delivers insights on such topics as solitude, flattery, vanity, friendship, insomnia, music, mortality, God, and the lure of disillusion.