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

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.

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.

Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.

Emptiness is not the opposite of existence. It is not nothingness or annihilation.

The only menace is inertia.

If you repeat something, it can become pointless. Some things can repeat and be endlessly fascinating.

Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world.

I didn't invent the culture, but I didn't try to stop the culture.

In order to thoroughly enjoy anything, one must feel the absence of it at times.

Don't shut yourself up in a band box because you are a woman, but understand what is going on, and educate yourself to take part in the world's work, for it all affects you and yours.

Inside the fogs, you think better and thus you see better!

Like so many American families, our families weren't asking for much. They didn't begrudge anyone else's success or care that others had much more than they did, in fact, they admired it.

I try to be patient. I feel like the point of art is to go down within yourself and to pop up into other people. If you're lucky, all of a sudden you're like, "whoop!" You're in other people.