“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.”

No one wants advice – only corroboration.

You’re bound to get ideas if you go thinkin’ about stuff.

It’s almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.

If you want to destroy a nation, give it too much – make it greedy, miserable and sick.

I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him–he has known a fear beyond every other.

With all our horrors and faults, somewhere in us there is a shining.

Socialism is just another form of religion, and thus delusional.

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.

And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.

When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influences and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.

A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

I believe that love cannot be bought except with love.

You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.

Stop proving yourself to people who don’t believe in you. You are a human, not theorem.

Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.

I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.

Be respected as being new, and probably a decent change or a help for the human race or whatever, instead of keep carrying the same old burdens around with you.

That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find, to equal among human kind, a dog’s fidelity!

I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems.

The desire to break the silence with constant human noise is, I believe, precisely an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter.