Here lies the real terror in the international war of ideologies; that a city knows not whom it entertains.

Those who foresee the future and recognize it as tragic are often seized upon by a madness which forced them to commit the very acts which make it certain that what they dread will happen.

[The satirist] must fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others.

Anthologies are mischievous things. Some years ago there was a rage for chemically predigested food, which was only suppressed when doctors pointed out that since human beings had been given teeth and digestive organs they had to be used or they degenerated very rapidly. Anthologies are predigested food for the brain.

Submission to poverty is the unpardonable sin against the body. Submission to unhappiness is the unpardonable sin against the spirit.

Neurotics, who cause less distress to themselves and their neighbours than those in the other category, are at war with their own natures. Their right hands are in conflict with their left. Psychotics, and it is those who commit purposeless crimes and prefer death to life, are at war with their environment. Right and left hands strike against the womb that carries them.

it is necessary that we should all have a little of the will to die, because otherwise we would find the performance of our biological duty of death too difficult.