“You know the look: genius gone to pot, and ready to join the Communist Party”

“Genius is play, and man's capacity for achieving genius is infinite, and many may achieve genius only through play.”

“The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.”

“I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even?”

“What can I tell you, except the stupid little I know?”

“The real story can never be told. It is untellable. The real (as real) is inaccessible, being gone in time. There is no point in glancing at the past, in summoning it up, in re-examining it, except on behalf of art — that is, the meaningful-real.(The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952))”

“Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.”