Evil men often easy to mislead, because they have spent so long deceiving that they no longer recognise the truth and mistake deseption for it.

If Edgar Allan Poe were alive today, his agent would be constantly slapping him upside the head with tightly rolled copies of his brilliant short stories and novelettes, yelling, 'Full-length novels, you moron! Pay attention! What's the matter with you -- are you shooting heroin or something? Write for the market! No more of this midlength 'Fall of the House of Usher' crap

Wealth is power, and power is the only thing about which contemporary culture cares.

All I asked was that I be spared surprises, although, in this world of six billion souls, all acting with free will and too many with audacity, surprises are inevitable, too few of them are the kind that make you smile and that lift your heart.

Thanks to the circus between my ears, I can seize upon the smallest disquieting observation and from it extrapolate a terror of cataclysmic proportions.

Not all or even most suffering is at the hands of fate; it befalls us at our invitation.

You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.