Maybe a new religion will rise now. Maybe without it, man will crumble in cynicism and selfishness because he really needs his gods.

There may be writing groups where people meet but it's occasional. You really do it all at your own computer or your own typewriter by yourself.

It draws it's strength, this big secret, from the same root from which I draw my strength, both the good and the bad, because in the end, they cannot be separated.

The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught.

You never know the palette of the one you kill until the mind disgorges its finest colours.

…being an atheist required discipline very like that of being Catholic. One could never yield to the idea of a supernatural authority, no matter how often one might be tempted. To think that a personal God had made the world was to yield to a demonic and superstitious and destructive belief.

as they die, the ones we love, we lose our witnesses, our watchers, those who know and understand the tiny little meaningless patterns, those words drawn in water with a stick. And there is nothing left but the endless flow.