All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain.

If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

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.

You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.