At the bottom of at least popular Marxism there has always been a kind of disgust with humanity as it is and a perfect faith in humanity as it is to be.

We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.

Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere.

The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.

What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of pain we all have.

It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief.

Unless we insist that politics is imagination and mind, we will learn that imagination and mind are politics, and of a kind we will not like.

It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.

The immature artist imitates. The mature artist steals.

One wrong social move---say---like hanging with the wrong person, ” she said nastily, “Can make your life around here a living nightmare and I definitely don’t think that you want that.

The thought of hurting him ripped me apart. Ripped me so totally, that I knew, I cared more for him than I did myself.

Life is a dancing dew drop on the tip of a leaf.

The study and knowledge of the universe would somehow be lame and defective were no practical results to follow.

I love silence. I seek and create it at every opportunity. I need it to work.

I always try to have something that keeps my mind relaxed, keeps my mind a little bit off tennis.

True beauty is knowing who you are and what you want and never apologizing for it.

It is the custom when praising a Russian writer to do so at the expense of all other Russian writers.

Here in L.A. the standard of beauty is kind of ridiculous. I want to be doing this when I'm in my fifties and sixties and this isn't what I'm going to look like.

I never touched a gun in my life. That and that alone forever doomed me to middle management.