“Always distrust absolute statements! Even this one.”

“Joyous distrust is a sign of health. Everything absolute belongs to pathology.”

“...we should all fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of its pessimism. But we have seen again and again, from our own experience and others', that absolute statements of hopelessness that we make in the dark are notoriously unreliable. Our dark certainties are not sureties.”

“Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.”

“It is impossible to distrust one's writing without awakening a deeper distrust in oneself.”

“As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.”