It shook up Trout to realize that even he could bring evil into the world — in the form of bad ideas.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

He didn't look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Perhaps I am the turtle, able to live simply anywhere, even underwater for short periods, with my home on my back.

About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the … appalling … strangeness of the mercy of God.

Wow!” gasped Julia. They saw 20 or more young children of every sort lyingon the cold, bare ground.

...perhaps in actions I'm less of a man - but, oh the words - such lovely words...

Uncommon expressions are a disfigurement rather than an embellishment of discourse.

External images act on me, transmit movement to me, and I return movement: how could images be in my consciousness since I am myself image, that is, movement?

You should always live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.

When someone comes up and says something like, 'I am a god,' everybody says 'Who does he think he is?' I just told you who I thought I was. A god. I just told you. That's who I think I am.

You've got to be taught to hate and fear.

The emancipation of women must be the work of women themselves, independent of the class struggle.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.