"Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine."

"Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown..."

"Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race."

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

"I have found God, but he is insufficient."

"I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous [person], the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the [person] in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable."

"No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance."

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

"What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse."

"Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen."

"Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern."

"Tomorrow is no hazardous affair, a day like any other day: tomorrow is the result of many yesterdays and comes with a potent, cumulative effect. I am tomorrow what I chose to be yesterday and the day before. It is not possible that tomorrow I may negate and nullify everything that led me to this present moment."

"No man ever puts down what he intended to say... words... are but crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain and sorrow to commemorate an event which is untransmissible."

"When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat."

"True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself."

"You can forgive a young cunt anything. A young cunt doesn't have to have brains. They're better without brains. But an old cunt, even if she's brilliant, even if she's the most charming woman in the world, nothing makes any difference. A young cunt is an investment; an old cunt is a dead loss. All they can do for you is buy you things. But that doesn't put meat on their arms or juice between their legs."

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

"Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning."

"We have no need for genius - genius is dead. We have need for strong hands, for spirits who are willing to give up the ghost and put on flesh..."

"I saw the errors I had made and assumed full responsibility for everything."

"We create our fate every day we live."

"The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."

"We have scholars galore, and kings and emperors, and statesmen and military leaders, and artists in profusion, and inventors, discoverers, explorers - but where are the great lovers? After a moment's reflection one is back to Abelard and Heloise, or Anthony and Cleopatra, or the story of the Taj Mahal. So much of it is fictive, expanded and glorified by the poverty-stricken lovers whose prayers are answered only by myth and legend."

"Words are loneliness."

"A beautiful nap this afternoon that put velvet between my vertebrae."

"All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience."

"Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior - hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized "hero of our time" - and of all time."

"If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having."

"He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals."

"What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs."

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

"Before I shall have become a man again I shall probably exist as a park, a sort of natural park in which people come to rest, to while away the time. What they say or do will be of little matter, for they will bring only their fatigue, their boredom, their hopelessness."

"Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am."

"The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble."

"Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets."

"We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests."

"What's a fuck when what I want is love?"

"No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe."

"The most difficult thing to adjust to, apparently, is peace and contentment."

"One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things."

"Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything."

"For in Mexico, ladies and gentlemen, it's always high noon and what glows is fuchsia and what's dead is dead and no feather-dusters."

"The only thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give is enough love."

"One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life."

"We defend with our lives the petty principles which divide us. The common principle, which is the establishment of the empire of man on earth, we never lift a finger to defend. We are frightened of any urge which would lift us out of the muck. We fight only for the status quo, our particular status quo. We battle with heads down and eyes closed."

"Over and over again I have said that there is no way out of the present impasse. If we were wide awake we would be instantly struck by the horrors which surround us ... We would drop our tools, quit our jobs, deny our obligations, pay no taxes, observe no laws, and so on. Could the man or woman who is thoroughly awakened possibly do the crazy things which are now expected of him or her every moment of the day?"

"It's best to keep America just like that, always in the background, a sort of picture post card which you look at in a weak moment. Like that, you imagine it's always there waiting for you, unchanged, unspoiled, a big patriotic open space with cows and sheep and tenderhearted men ready to bugger everything in sight, man, woman or beast. It doesn't exist, America. It's a name you give to an abstract idea."

"In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance."

"Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously."

"Tomorrow you may bring about the destruction of your world. Tomorrow you may sing in Paradise above the smoking ruins of your world-cities. But tonight I would like to think of one man, a lone individual, a man without name or country, a man whom I respect because he has absolutely nothing in common with you - MYSELF. Tonight I shall meditate upon that which I am."