Walter Kirn Quotes

Self-denial is not a virtue; it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

What’s the difference between spending your life trying to be invisible, or pretending to be the person you think everyone wants you to be? Either way, you’re faking.

You don’t knock on the devil’s door, boy, unless you want him to answer. (Ravyn)

Out on the roads there is fitness and self-discovery and the persons we were destined to be.

One of the most effective means of seduction that Evil has is the challenge to struggle. It is like the struggle with women, whichends in bed. A married man's true deviations from the path of virtue are, rightly understood, never gay.

What evil does first in the world, maybe, is distract us from our pursuit of goodness.

Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.

The wayfarer, Perceiving the pathway to truth, Was struck with astonishment. It was thickly grown with weeds. "Ha," he said, "I see that none has passed here In a long time." Later he saw that each weed Was a singular knife. "Well," he mumbled at last, "Doubtless there are other roads.

For in this walk, this voyage, it is yourself, the profound history of your 'self,' that now as always you encounter.

The most important thing about the gentleman was that he was an idealist. ... He was bred up to a code of self-restraint which taught resistance to pragmatic temptation. He was definitely a man of sentiment, who refused to put matters on a basis of materialism and self-aggrandizement.

For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery

What we know matters but who we are matters more.

I want to be remembered as an imaginer, someone who used his imagination as a way to journey beyond the limits of self, beyond the limits of flesh and blood, beyond the limits of even perhaps life itself, in order to discover some sense of order in what appears to be a disordered universe. I'm using my imagination to find meaning, both for myself and, I hope, for my readers."-Clive Barker

Self-conscious? Try a wig, a corset, a veil, a beard. Or cultivate shamelessness.

I did not lose myself all at once.

Spirituality is a journey inward that connects the Self to yourself. When you know who you are from the inside out, when you do what you sense is right for you, when your thoughts lead you to actions that serve others as well as make you feel good, then you have encountered spirituality.

The web of hypocrisy of today hangs on the frontiers of two domains, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough to serve morality without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough to live wholly to egoism, it trembles now toward the one and now toward the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of halfness, catches only miserable, stupid flies.

Becoming a woman is an act partly of nature and partly of self-invention.

The Diabolical sometimes assumes the aspect of the Good, or even embodies itself completely in its form. If this remains concealedfrom me, I am of course defeated, for this Good is more tempting than the genuine Good.

I don't really look for challenges as much as I like adventures. Other than that I'm just trying to find stories I want to tell.

You can never represent yourself totally .... to seek self -knowledge is to embark on a journey which ... will always be incomplete, cannot be charted on a map, will never halt, cannot be described.

It is fine to imitate a being you respect, but you cannot become that very being. Imitation is something one does to grow and develop. It is not something you use to deceive yourself. You absorb in yourself the things you think have some kind of value, but even if you try to find the meaning about your true self you will not find anything. Because those who cannot accept their real self always fail.

Self-deception is nature; hypocrisy is art.

Who would you be without your story?

The Devil did not tempt Adam and Eve to steal, to lie, to kill, to commit adultery; he tempted them to live independent of God.