It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.

Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.

I have thought that men and women should never come together except in bed. There is the only place where their natural hatred of each other is not so apparent.

Oh, the strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!

And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

Look at them. There are your true philosophers. I think that Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen. I think they survive in this particular world better than other people. In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed. All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs, and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and curiously clean. They can do what they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them something else.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.