I think someday you're going to be a great writer," he said. "But" he added maliciously, "first you'll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don't know what the word means yet. You only think you've suffered. You've got to fall in love first.

Part of the act of creating is in discovering your own kind. They are everywhere. But don't look for them in the wrong places.

Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.

My world of human beings had perished. I was utterly alone in the world and for friends I had the streets, and the streets spoke to me in that sad, bitter language compounded of human misery, yearning, regret, failure, wasted effort

We must not just be in the world and above the world, but also of the world. To love it for what it is... is the only task. Avoid it and you are lost. Lose yourself in it, and you are free.

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet.

Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal.