But this is not a world of free freights. One pays according to an iron schedule--for every strength the balanced weakness; for every high a corresponding low; for every fictitious god-like moment an equivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescoping long days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants, one must pay with shortened life, and, oft-times, with savage usury added.

Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me.

Pray do not interrupt me," he wrote. "I am smiling.

I was five years old the first time I got drunk.

Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death.

There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysicians.... Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for gods?