Man creates what he calls history as a screen to conceal the workings of the apocalypse from himself.

The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.

There is only one way to degrade mankind permanently and that is to destroy language.

Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats.

Even the human heart is slightly left of centre.

We are always in the place of beginning; there is no advance in infinity.

The world of literature is a world where there is no reality except that of the human imagination.

This story of loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature.

Man lives, not directly or nakedly in nature like the animals, but within a mythological universe, a body of assumptions and beliefs developed from his existential concerns.

The bible should be taught so early and so thoroughly that it sinks straight to the bottom of the mind where everything that comes along can settle on it.

It seems clear that the Bible belongs to an area of language in which metaphor is functional, and were we have to surrender precision for flexibility.

Between the happening of a historical process and its recognition by rulers, a lag stretches, full of pitfalls.

The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.

Tomorrow is an illusion suggesting that another chance always exists.  It is a dangerously false illusion.

Every affair is a fairy tale or a tragedy.

The little girl skipped by under the wrinkled oak leaves and held fast to a replica of herself.

Some people who love boxing might love Mike Tyson, but people outside of the sport are generally repulsed by him and therefore, repulsed by the sport.

...I'm so over the tattoos and the T-shirts and rings through the noses. It's not pretty, it's not pleasant, it's not exciting. Please stop it now.

A woman of 40 or 50 or 60 can take estrogen replacements, get facelifts, spend her money in bars.

Portraits I've done in the past I've always thought were a reflection of me.

It's true the people we meet shape us. But the people we don't meet shape us also, often more because we have imagined them so vividly. There are people we yearn for but never seem to meet.