One is always half mad when one is shy of people.

Every sensitive person carries in himself old cities enclosed by ancient walls

I don't want a future, I want a present. To me this appears of greater value. You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future.

When we realize that words can destroy something good, wonderful, and dear, and that by keeping silent we can avoid causing the least damage or harm, it’s easy to stay silent.

At least we should learn to understand our fellow beings, for we are powerless to stop their misery, their ignominy, their suffering, their weakness, and their death.

Today I told myself that in actual fact anyone who takes an innocuous and random delight in his life is an absolute lummox.

I am not here [in the sanitarium] to write, but to be mad.

That lovely things exist is a lovely thought.

How uninteresting interesting things can become.

Listening to music, I always have exactly the same feeling: something’s missing. Never will I learn the cause of this gentle sadness, never will I wish to investigate it.

With all my ideas and follies I could one day found a corporate company for the propagation of beautiful but unreliable imaginings.

Today's sales should be better than yesterday's - and worse than tomorrow's.

I always feel I have to take a stand, And there's always someone on hand To hate me for standing there. I always feel I have to open my mouth, And every time I do, I offend someone, somewhere.

And I tell people I'm in charge of children, children I haven't even met yet.

Luck is not chance, it's toil; fortune's expensive smile is earned.

Online communities are an expression of loneliness.

Travel opens your mind as few other things do. It is its own form of hypnotism, and I am forever under its spell

We will not, on the altar of money, mortgage our conscience, mortgage our faith, mortgage our salvation.

I demand excellence from the people I work with.

Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.