The Bible may be an arresting and poetic work of fiction, but it is not the sort of book you should give your children to form their morals.
Youth, however, can afford to enjoy even its melancholy; for the ultimate fact of which that melancholy is a prophecy is a long way off.
Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founder's than any other agency in the world.
We are hated because we are free. We are hated because of the idea that is the United States of America. We are hated because of our Constitution.
Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to talking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.
A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.
The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition.
A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.
Incidentally, why was it that none of all the pious ever discovered psycho-analysis? Why did it have to wait for a completely godless Jew?
I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him.
(the modern writer’s aim is) general revelation by suggestion (and) making a very tiny part do for a whole.
Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to taking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.
One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things.
The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis.
I am married to a writer, and this - writing - is an odd enterprise. It's something we both support very strongly.
People who grow up with two or more languages understand that each can express certain aspects of reality better than the other.
My parents were gigantic influences on me. I had a deep hunger to impress my father, who was a professor and an intellectual. I wanted his approval.
I watched 'Holiday' in college, and that was when I had my first fantasy of being Katharine Hepburn, standing at the top of the staircase in a huge Hollywood mansion.
There is a difference between using a made-up name and using real people as pseudonyms. People are not costumes you can wear. They are flesh and blood.
Writers are in control of editing processes - making a sentence better, cutting out a paragraph. But the initial outpouring has very little to do with conscious control or manipulation.
