Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it.

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

The world is always in movement.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

Behind these eyesthere is a girl trapped withinher pain – a girl feeling all the emotionsof anger and sadness.She’s fighting for a way out.” (In her eyes, p. 39)

One cannot be a part-time nihilist.

We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.

Second violins can play a concerto perfectly if they're in their own home and nobody's there.

Nay, but prithee, with sprinkles 'pon it instead," I said solemnly, "and frosting of white.

I got into plays in high school then I ended up going to college for it.

Power corrupts and there is way too much corrupted power. Stand up and monitor the government that is supposed to work for us. That's what the Tea Party represents.

Once you get labeled, there's nothing you can do about it.

God seeth different abilities and frailties of men, which may move His goodness to be merciful to their different improvements in virtue.