In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: its the next work, still to be written, that offers the second chance.

Language makes culture, and we make a rotten culture when we abuse words.

It is useless either to hate or to love truth - but it should be noticed.

I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something.

The usefulness of madmen is famous: they demonstrate society's logic flagrantly carried out down to its last scrimshaw scrap.

I'm not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of the so-called "scientific" mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers; they are gossips.

The imagination is a species of knowledge, knowledge that can take the form of discovery.