Reality must prove itself again and again to questioners ... it is the fantasy which goes on without contradiction, without having to prove itself.

The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can force it to change.

It’s a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator’s experience should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the artist’s.

The problem isn't to learn to love humanity, but to learn to love those members of it who happen to be at hand.

Babes, I am so bored here that I don't think, since I've come, I've ever been more than three minutes away from some really astonishing act of violence.

The truth is always multiplex.

Apocalypse has come and gone. We're just grubbing in the ashes.

Ambition like a liquid ruby stains.

The pleasures of love are really quite wonderful--though I suspect they are rather a luxury and require a certain level of socioeconomic stability to be anything other than a mode of suffering.

Don't go chattering to the stars if you're going to do it with your eyes closed.

It is easier to argue that something nobody believes in actually exists than it is to argue that something everybody believes in is unreal.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

When the spirit is happy, the soul is full of smiles.

With a strong faith in God and confidence in your abilities, who can dare to stop you?

A red leaf danced from a branch like a dropping flame, down into the calm blue lake. A gust had broken it free. There was a cold bite in the wind. It was now deep autumn in the mountains.

I'd have to say no, people don't change, but they can learn to behave differently.

So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.

Some critics are stimulating in that they make you realise how you could do better, and those are valued.

All men do not, in fine, admire or love the same thing.

Who does not more admire Cicero as an author than as a consul of Rome?

[she] had a great reputation for unselfishness because she was always giving up a lot of things she didn't want.