Louis Kronenberger

"On a very rough-and-ready basis we might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. An eccentric puts ice cream on steak simply because he likes it; should a crank do so, he would endow the act with moral grandeur and straightaway denounce as sinners (or reactionaries) all who failed to follow suit […] Cranks, at their most familiar, are a sort of peevish prophets, and it's not enough that they should be in the right; others must also be in the wrong."

"There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave."

"The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy."

"The trouble with our age is all signposts and no destination."

"In art there are tears that do often lie too deep for thoughts."

"Ours must be the first age whose great goal, on a nonmaterial plane, is not fulfilment but adjustment; and perhaps just such a goal has served as maladjustment's weapon."

"One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well."

"The Englishman wants to be recognized as a gentleman, or as some other suitable species of human being, the American wants to be considered a good guy."

"Conformity may not always reign in the prosperous bourgeois suburb, but it ultimately always governs."

"Individualism is rather like innocence; there must be something unconscious about it."

"Once you have money, you can quite truthfully affirm that money isn't everything."

"For young people today things move so fast there is no problem of adjustment. Before you can adjust to A, B has appeared leading C by the hand, and with D in the distance."

"There are, of course, good happy endings as well as bad ones, but surely they are of a kind that in some way expresses happiness rather than glibly promises it.."