“When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off;you become lame, abandoned by a fantasy.…People fancy they are enjoying themselves,but they are really tearing out their wingsfor the sake of an illusion.”

“You have been professing yourself reluctant to throw off your load of illusion because truth was uncertain. Well, it is certain now, yet the burden still weighs you down, while other people are given wings on freer shoulders, people who have not worn themselves out with research, nor spent a decade and more reflecting on these questions.”

“An enemy to whom you show kindness becomes your friend, excepting lust, the indulgence of which increases its enmity.”

“I had learned many times that the more you try to get people to deny their illusions, the stronger the illusions can become. But if you indulge those delusions instead, they often fall apart on their own.”

“On a lazy Saturday morning when you're lying in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, there is a space where fantasy and reality become one. Are you awake, or are you dreaming? You see people and things; some are familiar; some are strange. You talk, you feel, but you move without walking; you fly without wings. Your mind and your body exist, but on separate planes. Time stands still. For me, this is the feeling I have when ideas come.”

“If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they'll murder you in your sleep.”