I don't write out of fear. I write out of a strong urge to meet death on its own eternal terms, because the fact is that if you write as little as a page of prose-even bad prose-that is eternal.

You don't say, 'I've done it!' You come, with a kind of horrible desperation, to realize that this will do.

All novels are experimental.

Bath twice a day to be really clean, once a day to be passably clean, once a week to avoid being a public menace.

How wicked, my brothers, innocent milk must always seem to me now.

Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.

You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise Bog! I'm cured!