Find a pile of gold and sit on it.

An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

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

Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.

So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.

What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.

I couldn't go on, too conscious all at once of my whispering, my eternal posturing, always transforming the world with words--changing nothing.