In a profound sense every man has two halves to his being; he is not one person so much as two persons trying to act in unison. I believe that in the heart of each human being there is something which I can only describe as a child of darkness who is equal and complementary to the more obvious child of light.

On the night that the Second World war was declared, there were crowds in the street. It was a summer's night and there was a blackout. On every side you heard people crying: 'Look at the moon!' The moon had been there every minute of their lives and they'd never seen it.

There is a way in which the collective knowledge of mankind expresses itself, for the finite individual, through mere daily living . . . a way in which life itself is sheer knowing.

You cannot take the life of your times further than you have taken yourself.

Creativity and love come from the same source.

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.

The spirit of man is nomad, his blood bedouin, and love is the aboriginal tracker on the faded desert spoor of his lost self; and so I came to live my life not by conscious plan or prearranged design but as someone following the flight of a bird.