When it is darkest, men see the stars.

Every man is a borrower and a mimic, life is theatrical and literature a quotation.

When God lets loose a great thinker on this planet, then all things are at risk. - There is not a piece of science, but its flank my be turned to-morrow; nor any literary reputation, nor the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned.

Every man is a hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person whatever he says has an enhanced value.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

"Each of us is all the sums he has not counted. Subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas." Quoted expertly by Douglas Marlette in his exceptional Magic Time.

My goal is not to shock and horrify, but to tell the truth. And if that truth shocks and horrifies, well...maybe you should get out more.

I am too intelligent, too demanding and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself.

I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass."