What I secretly longed for was to disentangle myself of all those lives which had woven themselves into the pattern of my own life and were making my….

All the men she's been with and now you, just you, and the barges going by, masts and hulls, the whole damned current of life flowing through you, th….

An artist earns the right to call himself a creator only when he admits to himself that he is but an instrument..

Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing..

The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and see….

Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk..

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes..

After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you're walking or….

People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanent….

The vast difference between astrology and other sciences, if I may put it thus, is that astrology deals not with facts but with profundities. The sol….

The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or s….

I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing..

We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation..

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is not only a friend, it makes fr….

One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses..

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive..

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery..

Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him..

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd..

Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos..

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?.