When belief in a god dies, the god dies.

The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.

My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths.

Perfection. Excellence. What a passionate lover. But once having tasted the lips of excellence, once having given oneself to its perfection, how dreary and burdensome and filled with anomie are the remainder of one's waking hours trapped in the shackled lock-step of the merely ordinary, the barely acceptable, the just okay and not a stroke better.

[On love:] I have no respect for anyone who says they've given up, or that they're not looking or that they're tired. That is to abrogate one's responsibility as a human being.

Don't start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don't. They'll make you look like chopped liver.