Divisions of the kind were fashionable at that time, and it was so easy to stifle one's need to help by deciding that help could neither be accepted nor understood.

I have discovered that my freedom is within me, and nothing can destroy it.

Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.

For in spite of the snapdragons and the duty millers and the cherry blossoms, it was always winter.

I am not really a writer. I am just someone who is haunted, and I will write the hauntings down.

For your own good is a persuasive argument that will eventually make a man agree to his own destruction.

Very often the law of extremity demands an attention to irrelevance.

It would be nice to travel if you knew where you were going and where you would live at the end or do we ever know, do we ever live where we live, we're always in other places, lost, like sheep.

There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.

Life is hell, but at least there are prizes. Or so one thought.

So we went to bed, assaulted by sleep that fumed at us from medicine glasses, or was wielded from small sweet-coated tablets -- dainty bricks of dream wrapped in the silk stockings of oblivion.

[W]hen you try too hard to hold on to something, you break it. Sometimes, we need to let go so that other people can have their chance at the magic.

A design can excel at one challenge only by compromising at others.

You don’t stare the devil in the eyes and come out without some of his sin. You can’t beat the devil without becoming like him.

Beware the wrath of a patient adversary.

His fine wit Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it.

My God grant me love for that which has splendor, but in this time of my life let me strive for attainable things.

And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.

The message has to go to the streets, it's imperative that we reach those who may not get to a church. We receive their questions, it's important that the world asks questions.

How bless'd the heart that has a friend. A sympathizing ear to lend.

No town can keep a man, but men keep towns.