In the days when I was ambitious I worked out a very pretty little plan for conquering the whole earth and rearranging things as they ought to be; and when, in the end, everything became so good it almost began to be boring, then I was going to stuff my pockets with as much money as I could lay hands on and creep away, vanish in some cosmopolite and sit at a corner café and drink absinthe and enjoy seeing how everything went to the devil as soon as I wasn't on the scene anymore.

— Hjalmar Söderberg

Let me be mad, then, by all means! Mad with the madness of Absinthe, the wildest, most luxurious madness in the world! Five la folio! Five l'amour! Five l'animalism! Five LE Viable!

— Marie Corelli