The ultimate aim of psychoanalysis is to attribute art to mental weakness, and then to trace the weakness back to the point where, according to analytic dogma, it originated namely, the lavatory.

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.

Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

Stay away from people who drive your emotions crazily. Find a better company!

I hope that I capture something in my work that is about the elusive, the magical and powerful and the transformative. The writing in itself is transformative for me.

Unrequited love made right is the ultimate, isn’t it?

Conversation makes one what he is.

It was astonishing to see how angry Cersei could wax over accusations she knew perfectly well to be true.

Eating in a hurried or unconscious way, as so many of us have learned to do, is like receiving a love letter from the earth, but never taking the time to carefully read it.

Poetry has ceased to be a public art and has become, as Whitehead said of religion, "What man does with his aloneness.

I have learned to keep to myself how exceptional I am.

I hear Seven Cities natives grow fruit just so they can eat the larvae in them.

I was very obsessed. I mean, I could tell you the fat content and the calorie content in absolutely anything.