Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.

It's odd how violence and humor so often go together, isn't it?

War must never be a condition but, rather, a temporary scourge which we suffer as a child does a fever, knowing that health follows the long night of pain and that peace is health.

You treat violence as an aberration ... when in truth it is the norm. It is the very essence of the human condition.

Artists recognize other artists as soon as the pencil begins to move.

No one inspired me to write, but writer Harlan Ellison terrified me into getting published.

Words were like objects, making the idea more solid -- less a poisonous gas and more a ... cube of crystallized thought.