The vaporish cocaine loosens the contours of their lives and sets their bodies adrift, and so they are untouchable.

The pimp has a grin, never a smile.

Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.

There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts. The fragility and delicacy of the former are of the same nature as the brutal insensitivity of the latter.

A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.

Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.

It's the hour when night breaks away from the day, my dove, let me go.

My heart's in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand's in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.

Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.

Solitude, as I understand it, does not signify an unhappy state, but rather secret royalty, profound incommunicability yet a more or less obscure knowledge of an invulnerable singularity.

The time for reasoning is past; now's the time to get steamed up and fight like mad.

Men of God are always men of prayer.

Metaphysics is universal and is exclusively concerned with primary substance. ... And here we will have the science to study that which is, both in its essence and in the properties which it has.

[Rubinstein was] a fountain from which music spouted, not a recitalist.

One difference between ants and humans is that while ants send their old women off to war, humans send their young men.

It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.

If people around you aren't going anywhere, if their dreams are no bigger than hanging out on the corner, or if they're dragging you down, get rid of them.

I love jell-o. I love the way it comes in rainbow colours, wiggles and jiggles and looks like brains.

The art of not playing in tempo--one has to learn it. And the art of not playing what is written on the printed paper.

It's the familiar love-hate syndrome of seduction: "I don't really care what it is I say, I care only that you like it."

I don't want to stop you. I want you to stop yourself.