If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without.

Understanding is not a piercing of the mystery, but an acceptance of it, a living blissfully with it, in it, through and by it.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it.

My world of human beings had perished. I was utterly alone in the world and for friends I had the streets, and the streets spoke to me in that sad, bitter language compounded of human misery, yearning, regret, failure, wasted effort

The full and joyful acceptance of the worst in oneself may be the only sure way of transforming it.

Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.