“We move between two darknesses.”

When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.

Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?

I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them. It’s one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place.

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

How can I know what I think till I see what I say?

Don’t be mysterious; there isn’t the time.

You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish – not sit intending on a chair.

I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.

There’s never any great risk as long as you have money.

My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.

I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in everyone, even if you do not approve of them.

I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.

I have a lot of problems understanding connections between people and how to negotiate that. It makes everything hard offstage.

No one has better summed up the American appetite for spectacle, the link between sports and politics, and the absolute madness of George W. Bush’s Iraq War.

The bonds of trust between the United States and Israel have been frayed, but even the hostility and disrespect the Obama administration has shown has not severed those bonds.

It’s as if the border between the world and the print is osmotic.

There’s a lot of people that try to come between my clique and try to stop what we’re doin’, but we got no mercy for ’em.

If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live on after he’s dead, then maybe he was a great man.

You have a lot of small choices. It’s like . . . I guess it’s the difference between suicide and slow capitulation . . .

There are things known and things unknown and in between are The Doors.