“It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial.”

All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.

Don’t you think there is always something unspoken between two people?

Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.

Men don’t want anything they get too easy. But on the other hand, men lose interest quickly.

To be free is to have achieved your life.

A blindness to what is going on in each other’s hearts.

The woman spread her legs, and made me look between them. All I could see was something that looked like a dyin’ orchid; consequently, I have never been comfortable around women or orchids.

The name of a person you love is more than language.

All good art is an indiscretion.

Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

All creative work, all life in a sense, is a cri de coeur.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

We are all of us born, live and die in the shadow of a giant question mark that refers to three questions: Where do we come from? Why? And where, oh where, are we going!

If your focus is there, then the actual doing of the job will be fun and enjoyable. But if you’re so involved in trying to be interesting and a character and everything when you’re not working, it can get in the way and people get goofed up.

I actually don’t think that I’m that much smarter than anybody else. It’s just that I frequently just seem to know what to do, and I think that’s wisdom.

By means of truths concerning a reality beyond what is actual and observable, as a demand which plays no role in the scientific enterprise.

When actually what’s going to happen is we’re going to radically expand our lives billions and billions of times in every way, in every dimension and so I’m looking forward to things I can’t even imagine yet.

The prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know you need it.

I have no idea what my teacher’s intentions were – whether she was trying to inspire us or if she actually thought visiting her Manhattan brownstone with her view of Central Park qualified as a school trip.

I thought the world had actually ended. I thought nothing good could ever happen again.

All know the way, but few actually walk it.