I think it's a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one's self.

And old Dave, he'd go up to his room, y'understand, put on his green velvet slippers - I'll never forget - and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want.

The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.

The famous are balloons far up in the sky, to be envied for their quiet freedom or shot down as enemies.

After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.

Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way.

There is a kind of perverse unity forming among us, born, I think, of the discontent of all classes of people with the endless frustration of life.