Man is the only animal who is prone to insanity.

When I open my eyes in the morning, I am not confronted by a world, but by a million possible worlds.

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

Now individual consciousness, as typified in human beings, has great advantages and great disadvantages. Individuality means a narrowing, and narrowness can be useful. It is good for close-up work. We have invented the magnifying glass and the microscope to narrow our vision, because narrowness makes for precision. But narrowness also makes for a failure of purpose, for exhaustion of the will; for purpose depends upon a broad vision, a clear sight of one's objective.

Our language has become a tired and inefficient thing in the hands of journalists and writers who have nothing to say.

I've always believed that a writer has got to remain an outsider.

Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because humans are gullible and superstitious.