I'm an egotist, but I'm not selfish. There's a difference. I'm a neurotic, I guess. I can't stop thinking about myself. It isn't that I think myself so important. I simply can't think about anything else, that's all.

Everyman, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.

Every day that we fail to live out the maximum of our potentialities we kill the Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Christ which is in us.

My one thought is to get out of New York, to experience something genuinely American.

I didn't have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let's say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!

Your nearness is the nearness of planets. I am the void between you. If I withdraw there will be no void for you to swim in.

The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.