sarcasm and jokes were often the bottle in which clinical depressives sent out their most plangent screams for someone to care and help them.

life's endless war against the self you cannot live without.

This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.

True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.

Does somebody have an explanation why there's human flesh on the hall window upstairs?

There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us - these are just the hazards of being free.

I wasn't all that attracted to writing originally. I read a great deal. My parents read a great deal. I do know that as my interest in tennis waned, my interest in academics increased. I mean, I started doing my homework in high school and discovering that it was somewhat fun. And then in college I barely even played on the team because just classes were much more interesting.