An American Dream

I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946 … We went out on a double date and it turned out to be a fair evening for me. I seduced a girl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz.

I was now at a university in New York, a professor of existential psychology with the not inconsiderable thesis that magic, dread, and the perception of death were the roots of motivation.

The only true journey of knowledge is from the depth of one being to the heart of another.

Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is the growth of madness denied.

Love was love, one could find it with anyone, one could find it anywhere. It was just that you could never keep it. Not unless you were ready to die for it.

The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world.

Comfortless was my religion, anxiety of the anxieties, for I believed God was not love, but courage. Love came only as a reward.

Murder offers the promise of vast relief. It is never unsexual.

Witches have no wit, said the magician who was weak. Hula, hula, said the witches.

I had a quick grasp of the secret to sanity — it had become the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one's mind.