“What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.”

“But I think there comes a point in love, a unique moment which later on the soul seeks in vain to surpass, and that the effort to revive such happiness depletes it; that nothing thwarts happiness s...”

“Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves al...”

“Most people believe it is only by constraint they can get any good out of themselves, and so they live in a state of psychological distortion. It is his own self that each of them is most afraid of...”

“I have always thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, "Why did I never realize before that that was beauti...”

“Do you know why our poetry today and especially our philosophy are such dead issues? Because they've cut themselves off from life. Now, Greece idealized on life's own level: an artist's life was al...”

“Nothing is as it seems, but something is everything it is made out to be.”

“Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?”

“You'd be surprised how easy some things can be, things you never thought you'd do, when you take self-respect out of the equation.”

“In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.”

“So long as this country is cursed with slavery, so too will it be cursed with vampires.”

“Sometimes you got to lie on the outside to keep your voice loud on the inside. We dont owe the master the truth. He owes us. Nothing comes from the master. He is the thief in the night. He steals i...”