Each society is a hero system which promises victory over evil and death.

the best existential analysis of the human condition leads directly into the problems of God and faith

To live is to play at the meaning of life...The upshot of this . . . is that it teaches us once and for all that childlike foolishness is the calling of mature men.

When you confuse personal love and cosmic heroism you are bound to fail in both spheres. The impossibility of the heroism undermines the love, even if it is real. This double failure is what produces the sense of utter despair that we see in modern man... Love, then, is seen a religious problem

The artist takes in the world, but instead of being oppressed by it, he reworks it in his own personality and recreates it in the work of art.

Relationship is thus always slavery of a kind, which leaves a residue of guilt.

Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.