Recorded history is largely an account of the crimes and disasters committed by banal little men at the levers of imperial machines.

It may be true that my desk here is really 'nothing but' a transient eddy of electrons in the flux of universal process. Nevertheless, I find that it continues to support my feet, my revolver, and my cigars all day long. What happens when my back is turned I don't know. Or much care. That's no concern of mine.

If you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully -- as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your ancestors.

Beauty is only skin deep; ugliness goes all the way through.

I, too, believe in fidelity. But how can I be true to one woman without being false to all the others?

It's all still there in heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure-they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days and years to come.

War: First day in the U.S. Army, the government placed a Bible in my left hand, a bayonet in the other.