The golden fleece of self-sufficiency guards against cudgel- blows but not against pin-pricks.

Human, all too human.

The small force that it takes to launch a boat into the stream should not be confused with the force of the stream that carries it along: but this confusion appears in nearly all biographies.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.

Lust and self-mutilation are closely related impulses. There are also self-mutilators among knowers: they do not want to be creators under any circumstances.

If there is to be art, if there is to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy.