It has always been my ambition to die in harness with my head face down on a keyboard and my nose caught between two of the keys.

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

I even got a letter from a young woman in British Columbia that began as follows: 'Today I am eighteen. I am sitting at the window, looking out at the rain, and thinking how much I love you.'

I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing — to be clear.

The great secret of the successful fool is that he's no fool at all

I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library.

You show me someone who can't understand people and I'll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.