“It will be said that a rational person accepts the world as mixed of good and evil with decent satisfaction and decent endurance. But this is exactly the attitude which I maintain to be defective... We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent.”

“What we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise,but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce asurly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent”

“We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return to at evening.”

“The fact is that we have no way of knowing if the person who we think we are is at the core of our being. Are you a decent girl with the potential to someday become an evil monster, or are you an evil monster that thinks it's a decent girl?""Wouldn't I know which one I was?""Good God, no. The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.”

“We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.”

“Fill each day with life and heart. There is no pleasure in the world comparable to the delight and satisfaction that a good person takes in doing good.”