It is not easy to be solitary unless you are also born ruthless. Every solitary repudiates someone.

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.

Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.

I am always jumping into the sausage grinder and deciding, even before I’m half ground, that I don’t want to be a sausage after all.