The reason for the sadness of this modern age and the men who live in it is that it looks for the truth in everything and finds it.

If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

I feel sure that coups d'état would go much better if there were seats, boxes, and stalls so that one could see what was happening and not miss anything.

Debauchery is perhaps an act of despair in the face of infinity.

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.

People don't like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization.

There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.

What should a good children’s book be like? If you ask me, I can tell you after thinking long and hard: It must be good.

Don’t conform to those who have been overwhelmed by the tide of immorality sweeping our country!

The gossip mill runs on estrogen.

Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.

So, because I have a mental illness I should disappear and hide? Ever since I went into hospital, all I have heard and read about is people telling me what they think I should do.

Fantasy should be as close as possible to journalism.

I'm grateful that, after an early life of being silenced, sometimes violently, I grew up to have a voice, circumstances that will always bind me to the rights of the voiceless.

Small steps work—grandiose goals don’t.

The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all.

The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.