Don't try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We're all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat - and the boat is perpetually sinking.

Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.

But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery.

When an artist deserts to the side of the angels, it is the most odious of treasons.