It doesn’t exist, America. It’s a name you give to an abstract idea. . . .

Ideas are living creatures, active and activating, like flowers.

Gold, he says, tends to become more and more invisible, a myth, and no more defalcations. Excellent! I am wondering what will happen to the world when we go off the gold standard in ideas, dress, morals, etc. The gold standard of love! Up to the present, my idea in collaborating with myself has been to get off the gold standard in literature.

Debería ser rico para tener una secretaria a la que dictar, mientras camino, porque las mejores ideas se me ocurren siempre cuando estoy lejos de la máquina.

One can see now how the idea of heaven takes hold of men's consciousness, how it gains ground even when all the props have been knocked from under it. There must be another world beside this swamp in which everything is dumped pell-mell. It's hard to imagine what it can be like, this heaven that men dream about.

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.