he had been making an unsuccessful effort to write something about nothing in particular

Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.

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.

If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and tend to infect others with their discontents.

To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness - to be aware of it and yet remain in a condition to survive as an animal. Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves.