As it happens I don't think it was God- the woman who saved me, she doesn't look like she's had much to do with angels, Perhaps the Devil was behind me all the time.

You're the right colour for the Angel of Death, Mister Cale. But a little short.' 'I could cut your head off and stand on it. Then I'd be taller.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air.

It is not against reason, said the Englishman, to prefer the destruction of the world to a scratch on your finger – how much easier to understand the same price for the gash in your soul.

...the older I get, the more I believe that if love is to be judged by most of its visible effects, it looks more like hatred than friendship.

Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul.

We are all cynics now, I suppose, and even a mewling infant knows that to save a life is to make an eternal enemy.

Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation.

The man who believes that honesty is the best policy is not an honest man.

Hypocrites, ’ replied Cale, ‘I’ve come across a lot of them recently. I mean by that I understand now how many of them there are.

Better a live dog than a dead lion.

Now I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize.

If they had said my writing wasn't good enough, fair enough, that's an opinion. But to say it's too complex is to insult the intelligence of the so-called young.

John D. Rockefeller wanted to dominate oil, but Microsoft wants it all, you name it: cable, media, banking, car dealerships.

Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.

When a book of mine comes out, I instantly go hunting the net, not for praise, but for criticism, because that's how you learn, from people who don't have to be polite to you.

I've spent the better part of the last twenty-five years doing a lot of traveling.

The trouble with life in the fast lane is that you get to the other end in an awful hurry

Our youth want less adult contact if that co ntacttreats them like boys. They want more adult contact that treats them like young men. Tired as they are of the former, they are hungry for the latter

I think every metropolitan city has its pockets of - that's what makes them great.

A person in my position has to restrain himself.