Can freedom become a burden, too heavy for man to bear, something he tries to escape from?..Is there not also, perhaps, besides an innate desire for freedom, an instinctive wish for submission?

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'

Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.

It takes a moment to tell someone you love them, but it takes a lifetime to prove it.

Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

The lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness.

The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

The scars left from the child's defeat in the fight against irrational authority are to be found at the bottom of every neurosis.

To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.

The best part of a writer's biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style. [Vogue, interview, 1969]

Before becoming a mother I had a hundred theories on how to bring up children. Now I have seven children and only one theory: love them, especially when they least deserve to be loved.

I like everything that has to do with ghosts. If I see it, I'm all over it. We all have our thing.

Every artist should want to be like Michael Jackson

In my entire life I never set out to do anything ground-breaking or pioneering, and I'm not going to start anytime soon.

Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.

My book had a universal theme. It's not a "racial" novel. It portrays an aspect of civilization, not necessarily Southern civilization.

If I thought a man had never committed a sin in his life, I don't think I'd want to talk with him. A man with flaws is more interesting.

I always made a point of telling the doctors I was sane, and asking to be released, but the more I endeavored to assure them of my sanity, the more they doubted it