Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.

Our noblest hopes grow teeth and pursue us like tigers.

So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.

To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write [...] so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write [...] so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on. If there is good to be said, the writer should say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living. The true artist [...] gets his sense of worth and honor from his conviction that art is powerful--

One of the many interesting challenges nature presents us is its apparent disinterest in maintaining the order humans crave.