The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

Books: Classics

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Despair

All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing, yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty.

Fame

'Tis the white stag, Fame, we're a-hunting, bid the world's hounds come to horn!

Genius

A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.

Identity

The real meditation is... the meditation on one's identity. Ah, voilą une chose!! You try it. You try finding out why you're you and not somebody else. And who in the blazes are you anyhow? Ah, voilą une chose!

Intelligence and Intellectuals

The only chance for victory over the brainwash is the right of every man to have his ideas judged one at a time. You never get clarity as long as you have these packaged words, as long as a word is used by twenty-five people in twenty-five different ways. That seems to me to be the first fight, if there is going to be any intellect left.

Literature

Literature is news that stays news.

Paradise

It is difficult to write a paradise when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse. It is obviously much easier to find inhabitants for an inferno or even a purgatorio.

Procreation

I should consent to breed under pressure, if I were convinced in any way of the reasonableness of reproducing the species. But my nerves and the nerves of any woman I could live with three months, would produce only a victim... lacking in impulse, a mere bundle of discriminations. If I were wealthy I might subsidize a stud of young peasants, or a tribal group in Tahiti.

Techniques

Technique is the test of sincerity. If a thing isn't worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value.