The earnings of a poet could be reckoned by a metaphysician rather than a bookkeeper.

Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.

We cannot live, suffer or die for somebody else, for suffering is too precious to be shared.

When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels.

Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

It takes a long time to understand nothing.

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

A strong foe is better than a weak friend.

Narcissus never wrote well nor was a friend.

You're not completely alone, you have me! Even if the entire world turns its back on you, you'll still be the strongest as long as you have me!

There is no body cavity that cannot be reached with a number fourteen needle and a good strong arm.

If you’re so far down the totem pole that someone considers it a favor to you just to have you in their circle (no matter how far outside the ring you are), you should probably cut them out of yours.

I always say now that I'm in my blonde years. Because since the end of my marriage, all of my girlfriends have been blonde.

Science cannot avert a single thunderbolt.

People aren't happy unless they buy stuff, and that's because we have become this industrialized nation.

Gentleness is the outgrowth of benignity.

All grand thoughts come from the heart.

I was exactly having fun. I was stone miserable, but I wasn't hating doing it; I was loving doing it, but it's just damaged and warped.

Israel is our only true ally in the Mideast, and supporting it is the only moral thing for the United States to do.