Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.

We live at the edge of the miraculous.

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.

I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.

We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.

The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition.

Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.

Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern.

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature.

It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.

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.