It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writing than to put one principle into practice

The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery

I am convinced that the teaching of the church is in theory a crafty and evil lie, and in practice a concoction of gross superstition and witchcraft

In everything, almost in everything, I wrote I was guided by the need of collecting ideas which, linked together, would be the expression of myself, though each individual idea, expressed separately in words, loses its meaning, is horribly debased when only one of the links, of which it forms a part, is taken by itself. But the interlinking of these ideas is not, I think, an intellectual process, but something else, and it is impossible to express the source of this interlinking directly in words; it can only be done indirectly by describing images, actions, and situations in words.

All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good.