Could it be that sexual perversion and romanticism sprang from the same longing for distant horizons?

It was Rousseau who was largely responsible for the problem by giving currency to the idea that freedom can exist without responsibility and discipline.

Sexual activity is driven by the same aims and motives as reading poetry or listening to music: to escape the limitations imposed by the need for particularity in the consciousness.

The exploration of oneself is usually also an exploration of the world at large, of other writers, a process of comparison with oneself with others, discoveries of kinships, gradual illumination of one's own potentialities.

Being very famous is not the fun it sounds. It merely means you're being chased by a lot of people and you lose your privacy.

It is far easier to write an angry letter than to go and say angry things to another person - because as soon as we look in one another's faces we can see the other point of view.

The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.