The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.

In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.

If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.

And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?

What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.

Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.

Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.

Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

Actors die so loud.

No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe.

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.

Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip.

The world is the mirror of myself dying.

Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.

Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.

It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.

To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.

The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.

There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.

The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.

Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets.

If I am against the condition of the world, it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more.

Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.

The concert is a polite form of self induced torture.

One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.

Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.

The real enemy can always be met and conquered, or won over. Real antagonism is based on love, a love which has not recognized itself.

The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.

Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.

When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently.