How does life become totally painful By total retreat. Total noninspection becomes total pain.But existence is basically composed of a very few truths onto which have hung a great many artificialities and which man has adorned with enormous numbers of lies. And man is prisoner of his own shadows. Now one of the things you can do with man is to get him to look up and find out that he can look through the shadows and look at the shadows and find out what they are.

Every separate sector of artistic creation has its own basic rules . . . data which govern it. They are contained in the textbooks on these subjects. A professional knows the rules of the game as a matter of course so that he can achieve, in the upper strata above that, a high quality of art.

There is only one way, really, to get into a state of living, and that's live There is no substitute for an all-out, over-the-ramparts, howling charge against life. That's living. Living does not consist of sitting in a temple in the shadows and getting rheumatism from the cold stones. Living is hot, it's fast, it's often brutal It has a terrific gamut of emotional reactions. If you are really willing to live, you first have to be willing to do anything that consists of living. Weird. But it's one of those awfully true things that you wonder why one has to say it. And yet it has to be said.

The only aberration is denial of self.

On the day when we can fully trust each other, there will be peace on Earth.

I am studying ancient civilizations, trying to find what happened to them, finding out why they went into a decline, why they died.

A person is either the effect of his environment or is able to have an effect upon his environment.