The more a book is like an opium pipe, the more the Chinaman reader is satisfied with it and tends to discuss the quality of the drug rather than its lethargic effects.

All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

In quoting others, we cite ourselves.

Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies.

Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.

(memory is) A strange echo, which stores its replicas according to some other acoustic than consciousness or expectation.

The modern story begun, one might say, with Edgar Allan Poe, which proceeds inexorably, like a machine destined to accomplish its mission with the maximum economy of means.

We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.

For me the thing that signals a great story is what we might call its autonomy, the fact that it detaches itself from its author like a soap bubble blown from a clay pipe.

I think it is vanity to want to put into a story anything but the story itself.

Nothing is more comical than seriousness understood as a virtue that has to precede all important literature

Life is a mystery- mystery of beauty, bliss and divinity. Meditation is the art of unfolding that mystery.

Be passionate about creating a life that is exciting and fun, one that will help you reach your ultimate potential.

Some friend of yours, perhaps?""Except yourself I have none, " he answered. "I do not encourage visitors.

There's a difference, you know, between faith and playing make-believe. One will make you grow. The other one will make you sleep.

The construction of Europe is an art. It is the art of the possible.

An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life, and his life with his art.

I don't like inherited wealth.

War is the enemy of all mankind.

You are a flower crushed beneath the feet of the animal that is concealed in a human being. Take comfort, in that you are the flower crushed and not the foot that has crushed it.

You mean a bad heel?" I said. "Couldn't I just, like, wear something besides sandals? No offense." -Percy