Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

At four o'clock in the morning, when everyone is drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.

When you're writing you're trying to find out something which you don't know.

People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.

Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden.

People said that he was very nice, but I confess that his utter grotesqueness made me uneasy; perhaps in the same way that the sight of monkeys eating their own excrement turns some people’s stomachs. They might not mind so much if monkeys did not- so grotesquely- resemble human beings.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.