Art arises from sources other than logic." (p.32)

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.

Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.

Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.

Human beings are co-partners with deity in the project of being. This is the basis of all magic.

If silence is to be broken, let it be with the majesty of music.

Do you know the sums that I do?” “I count my blessings.

I love my apartment in New York.

I've never had a stylist, and I've always chosen my own clothes.

Will and wisdom are both mighty leaders. Our times worship will.

To be aroused in the dark by five feet of cold, green snake gliding over one's face is unpleasant.

I consume an enormous number of books, but they're always on a particular subject because I'm obsessive.

Pure Consciousness, which is the Heart, includes all, and nothing is outside or apart from it. That is the ultimate Truth.

[Much] as war attracts me and fascinates my mind with its tremendous situations, I feel more deeply every year . . . what vile and wicked folly and barbarism it all is.