Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting.

No one should be alone in their old age, he thought.

No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. ... I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things

Don't you like to write letters? I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something.

Fish," he said softly, aloud, "I'll stay with you until I am dead.

Rush, that most exciting perversion of life, the necessity of accomplishing something in less time than should be truly allowed for its doing.

Write hard and clear about what hurts.