The two men who have done the greatest harm to the world are Christ and Columbus. Christ taught us guilt and sacrifice, to live only in the other world, and Columbus discovered America and materialism.

Instead of answering her as soon as he saw her hair grow electric, her face more vivid, her eyes like lightning, her body restless and jerky like a racehorse’s, he retired behind this wall of objective understanding, this gentle testing and acceptance of her, just as one watches an animal in the zoo and smiles at his antics, but is not drawn into this mood. It was this which left Lilith in a state of isolation - indeed, like a wild animal in an absolute desert.

New York has an electronic heart.

The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. Always an orchestra, and just as music traverses walls, so sensuality traverses the body and reaches up to ecstasy.

No one was ever born without that light or flame of life. Some event, some person stifles or drowns it altogether. I was always tempted to resuscitate such men by my own joyousness or luminosity.When I break glasses in a night club, as the Russians do, when my unconscious breaks out in wild rebellions, it is against life which has crippled these idealistic, romantic men. I respect these men, cold, pure, faithful, devoted, moral, delicate, sensitive, and unequal to life, more than I respect the tough-minded ones who return three blows to one received, who kill those who hurt them.

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

The woman will sit eternally in the tall black armchair. I will be the one woman you will never have...excessive living weighs down the imagination: we will not live, we will only write and talk to swell the sails.