Style: There is something in too much verbal felicity (as in Joyce or Nabokov or Borges) that can betray the writer into technique for the sake of technique.

Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders.

There are two kinds of people I cannot abide: bigots and any well-organized ethnic group.

Nothing could be older than the daily news, nothing deader than yesterday's newspaper.

I have been a lucky man. But someone has to be.

In order to write a book, it is necessary to sit down (or stand up) and write. Therein lies the difficulty.

To the question: Wilderness, who needs it? Doc would say: Because we like the taste of freedom, comrades. Because we like the smell of danger. But, thought Hayduke, what about the smell of fear, Dad?