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.

New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness if you have no inner stabilizer.

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

Giving and receiving are at bottom one thing, dependent on whether one lives open or closed. Living openly one becomes a medium, a transmitter; living thus, as a river, one experiences life to the full, flows along with the current of life, and dies in order to live again as an ocean.

The man who is intoxicated with life does not pass judgment, does not seek to come to a conclusion, does not impose his message on the world.

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

Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.