“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.”

“After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do.”

“For every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it.”

“It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.”

“I know this … a man got to do what he got to do.”

“Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.”

“Man hates something in himself. He has been able to defeat every natural obstacle but himself he cannot win over unless he kills every individual. And this self-hate which goes so closely in hand with self-love is what I wrote about. - in a letter to George Albee”