“Everyone is isolated from everyone else. The concept of society is like a cushion to protect us from the knowledge of that isolation. A fiction that serves as an anesthetic.”

“Cannabis sativa and its derivatives are strictly prohibited in Turkey, and the natural correlative of this proscription is that alcohol, far from being frowned upon as it is in other Moslem lands, is freely drunk; being a government monopoly it can be bought at any cigarette counter. This fact is no mere detail; it is of primary social importance, since the psychological effects of the two substances are diametrically opposed to each other. Alcohol blurs the personality by loosening inhibitions. The drinker feels, temporarily at least, a sense of participation. Kif abolishes no inhibitions; on the contrary it reinforces them, pushes the individual further back into the recesses of his own isolated personality, pledging him to contemplation and inaction. It is to be expected that there should be a close relationsip between the culture of a given society and the means used by its members to achieve release and euphoria. For Judaism and Christianity the means has always been alcohol; for Islam it has been hashish. The first is dynamic in its effects, the other static. If a nation wishes, however mistakenly, to Westernize itself, first let it give up hashish. The rest will follow, more or less as a manner of course. Conversely, in a Western country, if a whole segment of the population desires, for reasons of protest (as has happened in the United States), to isolate itself in a radical fashion from the society around it, the quickest and surest way is for it to replace alcohol by cannabis.”

“the sky here's very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it's a solid thing up there, protecting us from what's behind . . . [from] nothing, I suppose. Just darkness. Absolute night.”

“She was saved from prettiness by the intensity of her gaze.”

“The sky hides the night behind it and shelters the people beneath from the horror that lies above.”

“Whoever invented the concept of fairness, anyway? Isn't everything easier if you simply get rid of the idea of justice altogether? You think the quantity of pleasure, the degree of suffering is constant among all men?”

“Each Whining Thing (1929)When stripèd snakes shall creep upon usAnd the nervous screams of birdsMake silent all the fountains and the orchards and when theseHave caught upon the wing each wingThat flutters from the skyThen shall I and then shall IRip out the smiles from garden walksTransform the minnows into hawksTarantulas and beesThen shall I and then shall IUnmake each whining thing.”