Proximity to reality induces feelings of emptiness, horror and depression. Do not approach it alone.
Literature is the product of a deep-seated need for honesty. Hence, those who lie most are struck most deeply by it, and those who are honest have no need for it.
We are not born with a need for knowledge, but a hunger for it. Eve bit the apple and it has been gluttony ever since.
It is said that the depressive has a clearer view of reality than does the euphoric. Perhaps, but the euphoric has a clearer view of life.
Writers are liars trying to come clean. That’s why the best ones are the most tragic.
Writers are compulsive liars desperately trying to tell themselves the truth.
Is it not ignorance that we share? A lie takes two. The truth we find alone.
Just because one is born in sin is no reason to brag about it.
Many humans make the mistake of fighting for race when it’s the species driving our genes. And there is only one weapon to fight for species: the brain.
If one chews a problem over long enough, it becomes apparent that the jaw is aching, and what started as weighing heavy on the heart ends up a pain in the neck.
Those who jump out of airplanes do not love life—they deny it, which, of course, is not done without a certain naughty exhilaration. Like children they relish tugging on the apron of Mother Nature, as long as she doesn’t turn and slap them.
Race should be seen in one way, and one way only: on your marks, get set, go!
Physiologically, the union of two opposites is a pleasurable affair. Why should the psyche be any different?
Contemplation and writing demand solitude, which leads to a sorry feeling of isolation and detachment. Writers try to call their loneliness genius, and the world believes them most of the time.
We would like to think of death as a release from the pressures of existence, but this is a fatally mistaken thought: it is the ultimate culmination of those pressures.
Infatuation is measured in pleasure. Love is measured in pain. Behold the value of pain!
Nothing distresses the civilized person like unfettered nature. The Grand Canyon seen from behind the railing is indeed a splendid sight, but as soon as the desert reclaims your golf course that is another matter altogether.
Wisdom doesn’t come only from the experience you have had, but from the experience you have chosen not to have.
We are all born wise. Unfortunately, we all don’t die that way.
If an artist wants to be original, he should not look to art for inspiration, for art seeks its model in life, not art—and only life is rich enough to simulate originality.
Words are a means to an end. Those who chase after them inevitably fail to reach that end.
There is nothing more blinding than having seen the light, and nothing more tiresome than sharing it.
To conceive of a god in one’s image is already quite a feat for inflated egos. To imagine, however, that this likeness has chosen your generation amongst the thousands for ending the party is to bring the egocentrism to new heights.