On the meridian of time, there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.

And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean, when boredom seems the very stuff of life.

I used to think a bird couldn't fly if its wings got wet.

The world isn't kept running because it's a paying proposition. (God doesn't make a cent on the deal.) The world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestioningly; they underwrite it with their lives.

Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.

She may be lying in bed reading a book, she may be making love with a prize fighter, or she may be running like mad through a field of stubble, one shoe one, one shoe off, a man named Corn Cob pursuing her hotly. Wherever she is I am standing in complete darkness; her absence blots me out.

Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'