Real people are made out of a whole lot of things—flesh, bone, blood, nerves, stuff like that. Literary people are made out of words.

The difference between being Achilles and almost being Achilles is the difference between living and dying.

The real reason for quest is always self-knowledge.

Every language has a grammar, a set of rules that govern usage and meaning, and literary language is no different. It’s all more or less arbitrary of course, just like language itself.

Reading is an activity of the imagination, and the imagination in question is not the writer's alone.

If a story is no good, being based on Hamlet won't save it.

Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.

In order to remain undead, I must steal the life force of someone whose fate matters less to me than my own.' I've always supposed that Wall Street traders utter essentially the same sentence.

Please note, I am not suggesting that illicit drugs are required to break down social barriers.

Now, Joyce being Joyce, he has about five different purposes, one not being enough for genius.

If you allow yourself to be bogged down and lose your enthusiasm, you are dead in the water. But if you remain optimistic, cheerful and committed to your goal, there’s nothing that can stop you.

I never see songs as permanent. I'm always in a state of revising everything.

If ever they remembered their life in this world it was as one remembers a dream.

If you're good to your body, your body's good to you.

The real stars of society are tired of appearing there. He who is curious to gaze at them must often migrate to another hemisphere, where they are more or less alone.

To know that the Bible is the literature of a barbarous people, to know that it is uninspired, to be certain that the supernatural does not and cannot exist - all this is but the beginning of wisdom.

Forever only takes its toll on some

The difficulty is no longer to find candidates for the offices, but offices for the candidates.

Sometimes I think the environment in which we operate is entirely too secular. The fact that we have freedom of religion doesn't mean we need to try to have freedom from religion