“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.

In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn’t tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.

Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.

Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.

When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he’s a writer. It’s an aphrodisiac.

The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what’s in it – they should, because they put it all in beforehand.

A good novel is worth more than the best scientific study.

California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn’t really need. You can quote me on that.

Happiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you’ve fallen into good hands – someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.

Why struggle to open a door between us when the whole wall is an illusion?

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Never say never, because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.

Success, fame, and fortune, they’re all illusions. All there is that is real is the friendship that two can share.