We told him to get on with it. We liked wasting time, but almost nothing was more annoying than having our wasted time wasted on something not worth wasting it on.

I know what to do with my life. I just don't know what to do with this one night.

To conform is to lose your soul

It is forgivable to say nothing out of ignorance; it's inexcusable to remain silent once awareness dawns.

All broken hearts are circumstantial. Every lovelorn jerk is the victim of bad timing, good intentions, and someone else’s poor decision making.

I think it's a very bad idea for someone to start writing for a readership.

We suffered failures of imagination just like everyone else, our daring was wanting, and our daily contentment too nearly adequate for us to give it up.

It is really irritating to work with irritating people

The main questions of everyday life are too enormous to answer in any definitive sense.

I wake up every day in order to do something that's quixotic, and not necessarily called for in the world, but I do it because there's extraordinary meaning for me behind the effort.

My first job is to write a book that I believe is compelling and deserves the long sustained attention that any novel requires, and to worry about the commerce only late in the game.

A person can be danced. In all continents the dancers carry little children on their shoulders.

Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.

If I'm exhausted, physically and particularly emotionally, I can't tell what's good and I can't tell what's bad and I'm useless.

Death obsesses me, yes it does. I can't really understand why it doesn't obsess everyone - I think it does really, I'm just a little more out about it.

There was always something. It's like with this one, there's always something that's mad that I look back on it and go, that's pretty amazing to say that I've done that or been there.

Figure skaters have awful perceptions of hockey players.

It has always been the artist who realizes that the future is the present and uses his work to prepare the grounds for it

I am a doctor, a real doctor.

Courage, hard work, self-mastery, and intelligent effort are all essential to successful life.

The Beat thing happened when I was younger. I used to run away from home, inspired by the Beats, like in '64 and '65.