Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up.

You take off your clothes and you're in bed with somebody, and that is indeed where whatever you've concealed, your particularity, whatever it may be, however encrypted, is going to be found out, and that's what all the shyness is all about and what everybody fears.

Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them.

Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.

Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?

For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence.

American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.