The sordid qualities imputed to the enemy are always those which we recognize as our own and therefore rise to slay, because only through projection do we realize the enormity and horror of them.

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

Leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.

The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.

Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

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.

Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.