I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me

We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.

With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.

The Edge...There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others-the living-are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there.

There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

You can't hoard fun. It has no shelf life.

There is no way to understand the public reaction to the sight of a Freak smashing a coconut with a hammer on the hood of a white Cadillac in a Safeway parking lot unless you actually do it, and I tell you it's tense.