“Perhaps only those people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the world.”

Mankind has got to get back to the rhythm of the cosmos.

Never trust the teller, trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

One sheds ones sickness in books- repeats and presents again ones emotions, to be master of them.

Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they’ve got none to spend. That’s our civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out.

He worked very hard, till nothing lived in him but his eyes.

They lived freely among the students, they argued with the men over philosophical, sociological and artistic matters, they were just as good as the men themselves: only better, since they were women.

Their words were only accidents in the mutual silence.

How she loved to listen when he thought only the horse could hear.

If you could only tell them that living and spending isn’t the same thing! But it’s no good. If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend, they could manage very happily.

As we all know, too much of any divine thing is destruction

You’re spending your life without renewing it. You’ve got to be amused, properly healthily amused. You’re spending your vitality without making any. Can’t go on you know. Depression! Avoid depression!

I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.

A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everyone.

What one does in one’s art, that is the breath of one’s being. What one does in one’s life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about.

When I hear modern people complain of being lonely then I know what has happened. They have lost the cosmos.

You can’t insure against the future, except by really believing in the best bit of you, and in the power beyond it.

Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

To be an actor you have to have a certain amount of madness in you. That’s why, when people meet you and you seem very together, they are quite surprised – they don’t see you behind closed doors.

I don’t like to tell people what format they can get things in, or say, “I’m only going to release this on vinyl and nothing else. You have to come to my world.” I don’t like to say that to people either. But, I do think there’s a loss of romance.

I dig my heels in every now and then, and think ‘I’m not going to do what’s expected or what people think is the right thing.’ So I have a little bit of that in my personality.

You cannot always get the validation from others, even from the people you love.

Don’t worry about what other people say, you could be doing what they’re doing or even better than them.

The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn’t know how other people would take it.