Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

Of some forty families I have been able to observe, I know hardly four in which the parents do not act in such a way that nothing would be more desirable for the child than to escape their influence.

Without mysticism man can achieve nothing great.

Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia -- it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.

To love the truth is to refuse to let oneself be saddened by it.

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say - because they were too obvious.

The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task.