All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

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.

To hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first . . . acceptance totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are [;] . . . the second . . . that one must never, in one's life, accept . . . injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength.

True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life

One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.

This is the charged, the dangerous moment, when everything must be re-examined, must be made new, when nothing at all can be taken for granted.