Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'

I read to be taken out of myself, to become ecstatic.

I am a free man―and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me! Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to any one. I would be responsible to God alone―if He existed!

Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer.

There's nothing wrong with the world. What's wrong is our way of looking at it.

What are our conductors giving us year after year? Only fresh corpses. Over these beautifully embalmed sonatas, toccatas, symphonies and operas the public dance the jitterbug. Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties. From the churches comes the melancholy dirge of the dead Christ, a music which is no more sacred than a rotten turnip.

But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here.