American married life is the doormat to the whorehouse.

Hard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesn’t return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different.

...Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.

We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent.

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man.