Opera cuts to the chase—as death does. An art which seeks, more obviously than any other form, to break your heart.

There is a grotesquerie to grief as well. You lose the sense of your existence being rational, or justifiable. You feel absurd.

Throw off your grief, ' doubters imply, 'and we can all go back to pretending death doesn't exist, or at least is comfortably far away.

The final tormenting, unanswerable question: what is 'success' in mourning?

We must be people who love to work

Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.

the ragged skyline of the city resembled the disturbed encephalograph of an unresolved mental crisis.

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.

The upheaval of our world and the upheaval of our consciousness are one and the same.

And by the Sacred Parchment, I swear that if I reveal the secrets of The Stonecutters, may my stomach become bloated and my head be plucked of all but three hairs

That which you worry about most in life is seldom bad, and that likely applies to dying.

By a tranquil mind I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered.

If someone kills you, they will deprive you of life, but they can never deprive you of your right to life.

One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one's own self.