One of the many interesting challenges nature presents us is its apparent disinterest in maintaining the order humans crave.

The image-managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market.

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.

...ultimately it come down to, are you making or are you destroying? If you try very hard to create ways of living, create dreams of what is possible, then you win. If you don't, you may make a fortune in ten years, but you're not going to be read in twenty years, and that's that.

i understand that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. i understood that, finally and absolutely, i alone exist. all the rest, i saw, is merely what pushes me, or what i push against, blindly - as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. i create the whole universe, blink by blink.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.