A strong foe is better than a weak friend.

Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.

We cannot live, suffer or die for somebody else, for suffering is too precious to be shared.

When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels.

Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

It takes a long time to understand nothing.

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

Narcissus never wrote well nor was a friend.

There is a strange and mighty race of people called the Americans who are rapidly becoming the coldest in the world because of this cruel, man-eating idol, lucre.

The most powerful affirmation you will ever find is this: “I am as God created me.

No, not like this, when I have not seen you without your skin on, when I know nothing, when I am not safe. Not you, whose name all my nightmares know.

Why would I want to fit in?

The best way to protect something is to set it free.

Hawaii's the 50th state? I thought it was a suburb of Guam.

Don't fret. We'll just have to find something else you're good at besides killing people.

Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.

I am supposed to be where I go.

If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on.

Facts do not constitute truth.