Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty...the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent humanity, the mark of cruelty.

Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.

You took the best, so why not take the rest?

I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.

When human rights are abused on a grand scale, the broth of purity boils and feeds the rebellion of a new order.