A giant thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.

The consolation of reading biography: Most great men have led lives even more miserable than our own.

I wait. Now the night flows back, the mighty stillness embraces and includes me; I can see the stars again and the world of starlight. I am twenty miles or more from the nearest fellow human, but instead of loneliness I feel loveliness. Loveliness and a quiet exultation.

From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the appetite of the tapeworm.

Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.

If you're never ridden a fast horse at a dead run across a desert valley at dawn, be of good cheer: You've only missed out on one half of life.

The rifle and handgun are 'equalizers' -- the weapons of a democracy. Tanks and bombers represent dictatorship.