It seemed better to delay thinking.

The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life to a function that doesn't interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative.

I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do — mostly with my time.

I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there.

young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer.

When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.

Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing. To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.