It is only for those without hope that hope is given.

Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.

The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.

The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.

Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe

All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.

When you demand perfection within yourself, you become more fallible.

A wise teacher is a keen and true student of absolute beauty and truth, and he searches everywhere for them in nature with all his heart

Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard.

My dad liked how January went with Jones. My sisters' names are Jina and Jacey Jones.

I love playing the new songs live. I hate playing a new song and then having to play an old song again, it feels really boring.

This is all very interesting, but Donald Trump won in an electoral landslide that had nothing to do with the Russians.

I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without any purpose - which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

I look at old interviews and things and they say, 'What do you want to do when you grow up?' I say, 'I want to be a producer.' And I'm really fortunate that I was able to do it.