Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.

Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.

Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.

The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.

I am sure it is everyone’s experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious recognition of something, which we really knew all the time but, because we were unwilling to formulate it correctly, we did not hitherto know we knew.

We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.

It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.