You got to live before you can afford to die.

All great and precious things are lonely.

I do not find illness an eminence, and I do not understand how people can use it to draw attention to themselves since the attention they draw is nearly always reluctantly given and unpleasantly carried out.

Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some working time.

Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.