Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well being.

No man, however civilized, can listen for very long to African drumming, or Indian chanting, or Welsh hymn singing, and retain intact his critical and self-conscious personality.

I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.

But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

Art is one of the means whereby man seeks to redeem a life which is experienced as chaotic, senseless, and largely evil.

...it is not what one has experienced but what one does with what one has experienced that matters.