Addiction is an increasing desire for an act that gives less and less satisfaction

To be excited is still to be unsatisfied.

Pully, hauly, tug with a will; the gods wiggle waggle, but the sky stands still.

This really revolutionary revolution is to be achieved, not in the external world, but in the souls and flesh of human beings.

That’s what the human brain is there for—to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols. Sometimes the symbols correspond fairly closely to some of the aspects of the external reality behind our experience; then you have science and common sense. Sometimes, on the contrary, the symbols have almost no connection with external reality; then you have paranoia and delirium. More often there’s a mixture, part realistic and part fantastic; that’s religion.

I was born wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born, and have made, in a curious way, the worst of both.

To associate with other like-minded people in small, purposeful groups is for the great majority of men and women a source of profound psychological satisfaction. Exclusiveness will add to the pleasure of being several, but at one; and secrecy will intensify it almost to ecstasy.