With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

Dreamless nights, I knew, can be the most troubling, since you come back not knowing where you've been or what you've done.

Revenge is Always Sweet, it's the Aftertaste that's Bitter.

Woman is at once apple and serpent.

I don't believe in competitions between artists. This is insane. Who has the authority to say someone is better?

I don't really pursue writing songs for other people. I guess one of the things I always think about is a good line in a song should be something I can hear myself saying.

Songs of praise the angels sang, Heav'n with alleluias rang, when creation was begun, when God spoke and it was done.

I don't play a character. It's totally just an extension of myself.

The economic answer to the world's problems is John Adams, not [Karl] Marx.

I feel like in a way I'm starting over, with everything.

I am impressed by how much of my grandparent's life depended on continuities, contacts, connections, friendships, and blood relationships.