The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.

No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.

It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the battle field.

Be careful what you set your heart upon, for it will surely be yours.

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.