For only fools, fanatics, and mental cases can stand living at the highest pitch of soul; a sane person must be content with declaring that life would not be worth living without a spark of that mysterious fire.

But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell!

... there is no such thing as a rational world and a separate irrational world, but only one world containing both.

A politician who climbs high over the bodies of the slain is described as vile or great according to the degree of his success.

One must conform to the baseness of an age or become neurotic.

[...] a number of flawed individuals can often add up to a brilliant social unit.

Strong emotional experiences are for the most part impersonal. Anyone who has hated another person so much that only chance stands between that person and death knows this, as does whoever has fallen into the catastrophe of a deep depression, anyone who has loved a woman to the dregs, anyone who has beaten others bloody or ever come up behind another person with muscles trembling. "Losing one's head," language calls it. Emotional experience is, in itself, poor in qualities; qualities are brought to it by the person who has the experience.