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.

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

Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.

The public always prefers to be reassured. There are those whose job this is. There are only too many.

From the satisfaction of desire there may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair.

Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death

Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.