A man's interest in the world is only an overflow from his interest in himself.

Start with the belief that your life can indeed be changed, and that you have the power to change it.

I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.

Unless comedy touches me as well as amuses me, it leaves me with a sense of having wasted my evening. I go to the theatre to be moved to laughter, not to be tickled or bustled into it.

The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like the state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.