A plot without action is like pasta without garlic, like Dolly Parton without cleavage, and like a writer without his similes.

Or maybe they were just doing it for fun. A lark. Their religion is tolerant of extreme forms of recreation. Boys will be boys, after all, and sociopathic boys will be sociopathic.

It is human nature to want to believe in the wizardry of the magician--but also to turn against him and to scorn him the moment that he commits the slightest error that reveals his trickery. Those in the audience are embarrassed to have been so easily astonished, and they blame the performer for their gullibility.

Where there is cake, there is hope. And there is always cake.

Never, never try to scope the market.

Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work-it's a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love him.

The dead are merely the countrymen of my future.