Every writer has certain subjects that they write about again and again, and . . . most people's books are just variations on certain themes.

Horror is always aware of its cause; terror never is. That is precisely what makes terror terrifying.

If it’s going to be a world with no time for sentiment, it’s not a world that I want to live in.

Sometimes awful things have their own beauty.

These books have not made George nobler or better or more truly wise. It is just that he likes listening to their voices, the one or the other, acording to his mood. He misuses them quite ruthlessly - despite the respectful way he has to talk about them in public - to put him to bed, to take his mind off the hands of the clock, to relax the nagging of his pyloric spasm, to gossip him out of his melancholy, to trigger the conditioned reflexes of his colon.

I'll bet Shakespeare compromised himself a lot; anybody who's in the entertainment industry does to some extent.

Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you’re being persecuted, you hate what’s happening to you, you hate the people who are making it happen; you’re in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn’t recognize love if you met it! You’d suspect love! You’d think there was something behind it—some motive—some trick.