“Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure.”

While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it.

But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.

Mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.

I don’t believe in miracles because it’s been a long time since we’ve had any.

He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it.

Anything worth dying for is certainly worth living for.

History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind.

Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.

Frankly, I’d like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody

The laws of nature are only as immutable as the minds which promote them. Ignorance of the law is 9/10ths of the law. Just because you aren’t paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.

He was never without misery, and never without hope.

You’re an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I’m an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I’m in an ideal position to appreciate it.

All of my books deal in a very rough, rude fashion with subjects about which there are great conflicts of opinion.

They agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.