"Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."

"The world is the mirror of myself dying."

"The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks."

"Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge."

"Art consists in going the full length. If you start with the drums you have to end with dynamite, or TNT."

"One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one."

"He read as much as his curiosity demanded - which is to say all."

"The only artists for whom I would make way are - children. For me the paintings of children belong side by side with the works of the masters."

"The world around me is dissolving leaving here and there spots of time. The world is a cancer eating itself away."

"Living with a whore--even the best whore in the world--isn't a bed of roses."

"Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip."

"There are those of poor spirit and there are those of great spirit. None are without it but the flame flickers pretty low in some cases. The majority of people seem to be nothing but a little flickering flame. You know that when you match them against an individual who is all fire, all radiance. Those in whom the flame of the spirit runs high are extraordinary examples of human beings."

"To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in."

"A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition."

"The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts."

"Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is."

"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 destiny a part of theirs. To shake myself free of these accumulating experiences which were mine only by force of inertia required a violent effort. Now and then I lunged and tore at the net, but only to become more enmeshed. My liberation seemed to involve pain and suffering to those near and dear to me. Every move I made for my own private good brought about reproach and condemnation. I was a traitor a thousand times over."

"There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him."

"Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature."

"Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur."

"The real enemy can always be met and conquered, or won over. Real antagonism is based on love, a love which has not recognized itself."

"Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense."

"We create our fate every day ... most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior."

"An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness."

"Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant."

"Previously, when I began to write this tale, I set out by saying that Mlle. Claude was a whore. She is a whore, of course, and I'm not trying to deny it, but what I say now is--if Mlle. Claude is a whore then what name shall I find for the other women I know?"

"The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens."

"When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes."

"I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth."

"I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul."

"If you can't give the is-ness of a thing give the not-ness of it! The main thing is to hook up, get the wheels turning, sound off. When your brakes jam, try going in reverse. If often works."

"Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination."

"And for that one moment of freedom you have to listen to all that love crap... it drive me nuts sometimes... I want to kick them out immediately... I do now and then. But that doesn't keep them away. They like it, in fact. The less you notice them the more they chase after you. There's something perverse about women... they're all masochists at heart."

"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 friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold."

"Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'"

"If this was the true self it was marvelous and what's more it seemed never to change but always to pick up from the last stop, to continue in the same vein, a vein I had struck when I was a child and went down in the street for the first time alone and there frozen into the dirty ice of the gutter lay a dead cat, the first time I had looked at death and grasped it. From that moment I knew what it was to be isolated: every object, every living thing and every dead thing led its independent existence. My thoughts too led to an independent existence."

"It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis."

"The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death."

"Actors die so loud."

"The kangaroo has a double penis - one for week days and one for holidays."

"It was a crushing defeat, but it put iron in my backbone and sulphur in my blood. I knew at least what it was to fail. I knew what it was to attempt something big."

"I struggled in the beginning. I said I was going to write the truth so help me God. And I thought I was. I found I couldn't. Nobody can write the absolute truth."

"Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed."

"I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse."

"Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself."

"What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature."

"I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget."

"Every time you come to the limit of what is demanded of you, you are faced with the same problem-to be yourself!"

"In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other."

"Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire."