The trouble with fiction," said John Rivers, "is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.

Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.

I am ignorant and impotent and yet, somehow or other, here I am, unhappy, no doubt, profoundly dissatisfied ... In spite of everything I survive.

I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.

You got rid of them. Yes, that’s just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether ‘tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them… But you don’t do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It’s too easy.

Dictators can always consolidate their tyranny by an appeal to patriotism.

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.