The Outsider's case against society is very clear. All men and women have these dangerous, unnamable impulses, yet they keep up a pretense, to themselves, to others; their respectability, their philosophy, their religion, are all attempts to gloss over, to make civilized and rational something that is savage, unorganized, irrational. He is an Outsider because he stands for truth.

The self-surmounter can never put up with the man who has ceased to be dissatisfied with himself.

...the Outsider's problem is the problem of denial of self-expression.

You've got the temperament of a scholar, and you live on your own and write books. You don't have anything to do with civilization. You've been in London a few days and you can't wait to get back home. But how about the people who can't write books -- people there's no outlet for in this civilization? What about your new men who don't know what to do?

In most men, the conscious and the unconscious being hardly ever make contact; consequently the conscious aim is to make himself as comfortable as possible with as little effort as possible. But there are other men, whom we have been calling, for convenience, 'Outsiders', whose conscious and unconscious being keep in closer contact, and the conscious mind is forever aware of the urge to care about 'more abundant life', and care less about comfort and stability and the rest of the notions that are so dear to the bourgeois.

Man is as much a slave to his immediate surroundings now as he was when he lived in tree-huts. Give him the highest, the most exciting thoughts about man's place in the universe, the meaning of history; they can all be snuffed out in a moment if he wants his dinner, or feels irritated by a child squalling on a bus. He is bound by pettiness.

Art is naturally concerned with man in his existential aspect, not in his scientific aspect. For the scientist, questions about man's stature and significance, suffering and power, are not really scientific questions; consequently he is inclined to regard art as an inferior recreation. Unfortunately, the artist has come to accept the scientist's view of himself. The result, I contend, is that art in the twentieth century - literary art in particular - has ceased to take itself seriously as the primary instrument of existential philosophy. It has ceased to regard itself as an instrument for probing questions of human significance. Art is the science of human destiny. Science is the attempt to discern the order that underlies the chaos of nature; art is the attempt to discern the order that underlies the chaos of man. At its best, it evokes unifying emotions; it makes the reader see the world momentarily as a unity.

The Outsider is always unhappy, but he is an agent that ensures the happiness for millions of 'Insiders'.

It is the fallacy of all intellectuals to believe that intellect can grasp life. It cannot, because it works in terms of symbols and language. There is another factor involved: consciousness. If the flame of consciousness is low, a symbol has no power to evoke reality, and intellect is helpless.

There certainly is self division. The man who watches a woman undressing has the red eyes of an ape; yet the man who sees two young lovers, really alone for the first time, who brings out all the pathos, the tenderness and uncertainty when he tells about it, is no brute; he is very much human. And the ape and the man exist in one body; and when the ape's desires are about to be fulfilled, he disappears and is succeeded by the man, who is disgusted with the ape's appetite.

But Zarathustra made it clear in which direction the answer lay; it is towards the artist-psychologist, the intuitional thinker. There are very few such men in the world's literature; the great artists are not thinkers, the great thinkers are seldom artists.

The Outsider cannot accept life as it is, who cannot consider his own existence or anyone else's necessary. He sees 'too deep and too much'. It is still a question of self-expression.

Husserl has shown that man's prejudices go a great deal deeper than his intellect or his emotions. Consciousness itself is 'prejudiced' - that is to say, intentional.

The individual begins that long effort as an Outsider; he may finish it as a saint.

Haikus allow the whole world to appear within things.

Emptiness is not a denial of the proper but an affirmation of it.

Ritual society is a society of rules. It is based not on virtues but on a passion for rules.

Enlightenment is an awakening to the everyday.

Psychological disorders are symptoms of a blocked story... The patient is cured the moment she narrates herself free.

...Zen Buddhism, this religion of immanence.

If life can no longer be narrated, wisdom deteriorates, and its place is taken by problem-solving.

In the empire of signs, the soul, psychology, is erased. There is no soul to infect the holy seriousness of ritual play.

Emptiness empties the one seeing into what is seen.

God is nothingness: He is 'beyond all speech.'

Stories on digital platforms like Facebook or Instagram are not genuine stories. They have no narrative duration. Rather, they are just sequences of momentary impressions that do not tell us anything.

It is not honourable to attack an enemy without putting yourself at risk.

Emptiness simply prevents what is individual from insisting on itself.

...I pray to God to make me free of God.

The smartphone seems to be a playground, but it is a digital panopticon.

Thinking is more erotic than calculating.

The emptiness of Zen Buddhism... creates a neighborly nearness between things.

Today, to live means merely to produce.

At the deepest level, the desire for complete union with God exhibits a narcissistic structure.

Without narration, life is purely additive.

The pornographic body lacks any symbolism. The ritualized body, by contrast, is a splendid stage, with secrets and deities written into it.

To die is to wander.

Poems are magic ceremonies of language.

Zen Buddhism is inspired by a basic trust in the Here, a basic trust in the world.

The reason that people take selfies is not narcissism. Rather, it is inner emptiness. There is no meaning to stabilize the ego. Faced with its inner emptiness, the ego constantly produces itself.

The freedom of the 'everyday mind' consists rather in not kneeling down in awe. Its mental attitude is better expressed as sitting unmoveable like an object.

When we resist impermanence, the self intensifies.

The liturgy of emptiness dispels the capitalist economy of the commodity.

The huge laugh is a most extreme expression of freedom.

A screen bans reality.

Power is never naked. Rather, it is eloquent.

Money, as a matter of principle, makes everything the same.

Full of gods means full of meaning, full of narration. The world becomes readable, like a picture.

Today, tattoos lack symbolic power. All they do is point toward the uniqueness of the bearer. The body is neither a ritual stage nor a surface of projection; rather, it is an advertising space.

A truly powerful holder of power does not simply elicit agreement, but enthusiasm and excitement.

Happiness is the proof that time can accommodate eternity.