I did not enter into silence. Silence captured me.

I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible.

Usura slayeth the child in the womb It stayeth the young man's courting It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth between the young bride and her bridegroom

I should consent to breed under pressure, if I were convinced in any way of the reasonableness of reproducing the species. But my nerves and the nerves of any woman I could live with three months, would produce only a victim... lacking in impulse, a mere bundle of discriminations. If I were wealthy I might subsidize a stud of young peasants, or a tribal group in Tahiti.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, Mamma, can I open the light? She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.