“Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory - all these have served, in H. G. Wells's phrase, as Doors in the Wall.”

“Oh you the creator, you the destroyer, you who sustain and make an end,Who in sunlight dance among the birds and the children at their play,Who at midnight dance among corpses in the burning grounds,You Shiva, you dark and terrible Bhairava,You Suchness and Illusion, the Void and All Things,You are the lord of life, and therefore I have brought you flowers;You are the lord of death, and therefore I have brought you my heart—This heart that is now your burning ground.Ignorance there and self shall be consumed with fire.That you may dance, Bhairava, among the ashes.That you may dance, Lord Shiva, in a place of flowers,And I dance with you.”

“Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.”

“Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.”

“‎"But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.”

“I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can't write really well about anything else. Why was that old fellow such a marvelous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.”

“Fortunate boys!' said the Controller. 'No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy - to preserve you, so as far as that is possible, from having emotions at all.' 'Ford's in his flivver,' murmured the DHC. 'All's well with the world.”