It was still quiet in the house, and not a sound was heard from outside, either. Were it not for this silence, my reverie would probably have been disrupted by reminders of daily duties, of getting up and going to school.

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

Only the shallow know themselves.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

I didn’t go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school.

When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends – the right sort.

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

I’m really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

Man’s enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.

College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.

Sooner or later we’re all someone’s dog.

We knew sports was important to us and our family, but there are priorities in life.Obviously, faith is foremost; how we did in school is important. If we didn’t handle that business then there were no privileges.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

I tend to stay up late, not because I’m partying but because it’s the only time of the day when I’m alone and don’t have to be performing.

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

I really have had to swallow my own prejudice at times.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

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.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

Silence is a source of great strength.

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‚That person I see is a savage monster;‘ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

I was never top of the class at school, but my classmates must have seen potential in me, because my nickname was ‚Einstein.‘

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

I’m an expert typist. I learned in high school. I would close my eyes and just type without worrying about mistakes. I tried to penetrate my heart, and as I let my thoughts drift, things bubbled up to the surface.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

To live is to think.

Silence is safer than speech.

Silence is a true friend who never betrays.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

Fondly we think we honor merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men.

It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.

One might say that our words are a movie screen that reveals what we have been thinking and the attitudes we have.