"Being biracial is sort of like being in a secret society. Most people I know of that mix have a real ability to be in a room with anyone, black or white."

"Throughout my career I have been talked out of things I wanted to do, and when I look back, I think I should have followed my instincts."

"A person's self-esteem has nothing to do with how she looks."

"Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time."

"The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind."

"We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight."

"I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams."

"Imagination is a very potent thing, and in the uneducated often usurps the place of genuine experience."

"Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end."

"I am not very proud of being an human being; in fact, I distinctly dislike the species in many ways. I can readily conceive of beings vastly superior in every respect."

"It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude."

"The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilised cynic to do other than worship it."

"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places."

"I could not write about 'ordinary people' because I am not in the least interested in them."

"All rationalism tends to minimalise the value and the importance of life and to decrease the sum total of human happiness."

"One can never produce anything as terrible and impressive as one can awesomely hint about."

"The man or nation of high culture may acknowledge to great lengths the restraints imposed by conventions and honour, but beyond a certain point, primitive will or desire cannot be curbed."

"Man's respect for the imponderables varies according to his mental constitution and environment. Through certain modes of thought and training, it can be elevated tremendously, yet there is always a limit."

"But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean."

"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."

"Adulthood is hell."

"I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me."

"Very few minds are strictly normal, and all religious fanatics are marked with abnormalities of various sorts."

"Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous."