It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.

“Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asked. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?” “I don't know.” “Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with.

I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir--but I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brave man will have made them a little braver.

You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.