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

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

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.

Actors die so loud.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

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.

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.

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

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