Patterns are prostitution to the patter of parents.

Life is islands of ecstasy in an ocean of ennui, and after the age of thirty land is seldom seen.

We are blind to the worlds within us, waiting to be born.

I hated myself and the world because I had failed to face and accept the limitations of my self and of life. In literature this refusal is called romanticism; in psychology, neurosis.

Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety-filled and diffused? It was the Goddam sense of having a self.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we normally live our lives and we'd sort of like to find out what it is.

And it's his illusions about whatconstitutes the real world which are inhibiting him...His reality, his reason, his society ... These are what must be destroyed

Understand yourself, accept yourself, but do not be yourself.

Love is one of society's many socially accepted forms of madness.

Psychoanalysis seemed an expensive, slow working, unreliable tranquilizer. If LSD were really to do whatAlpert and Leary claimed for it, all psychiatrists would be out of a job overnight.

One desire, my friends, one: to kill yourself. You must desire this. You must feel that a voyage of discovery is more important than all the little trips which the normal consumer self wants to buy.

We make our own luck. I believed that, too. We chose our own fate. We controlled our own future. I knew what I wanted. I needed to go get it.

What do you want to trust me with tonight?" A sigh escaped forcefully, waving the white flag that I was a melted, scorched woman at those words. "Anything, " I whispered back.

If you don’t make time for writing, writing won’t make time for you.

The wisdom and experience of older people is a resource of inestimable worth. Recognizing and treasuring the contributions of older people is essential to the long-term flourishing of any society.

Anyone who attempts anything original in the world must expect a bit of ridicule.

I am not brave enough to not pay my income tax and risk going to jail. But I can say rather freely what I want to say with my art.

I watched the Republican debate. At one point, the candidates said there are no classes in America, a point then hotly debated by all six rich white guys that were there.

One goal of my art is to help people remember why they are here now.

I have no name for what circles so perfectly.

We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.