The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.
Life's only choosing when to die. Life's a big postponement because the choice is so difficult. It's a tremendous relief not to have to choose.
We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.
Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.
People don't want to know. They have to be made to know. Whether they act on what they know is up to them. But they have to know.
You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn't care.
The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance; music, for instance. You must take your chance, boy. The choice has been all yours.
You have no cause to grumble boy. You made your choice and all this is a consequence of your choice. Whatever now ensues is what you yourself have chosen.
Well, everything's a lesson, isn't it? Learning all the time, as you could say.
The thrill of theft, of violence, the urge to live easy - is it worth it when we have undeniable proof, yes, yes, incontrovertible evidence that hell exists?
What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?
The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress.
And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good.
You can viddy that everything in this wicked world counts. You can pony that one thing always leads to another. Right right right.
When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea.
And now, talking of praying, I realise sadly that there will be little point in praying for you. You are passing now to a region where you will be beyond the reach of the power of prayer.
The unconscious mind has a habit of asserting itself in the afternoon.
He said it was artificial respiration, but now I find I am to have his child.
Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy.
