All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet - if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.

One can see now how the idea of heaven takes hold of men's consciousness, how it gains ground even when all the props have been knocked from under it. There must be another world beside this swamp in which everything is dumped pell-mell. It's hard to imagine what it can be like, this heaven that men dream about.

I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people.

The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses.

Certainly paradise, whatever, wherever it be, contains flaws. (Paradisical flaws, if you like.) If it did not, it would be incapable of drawing the hearts of men or angels.

I used to think a bird couldn't fly if its wings got wet.

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.