The man who has learned that three plus one are four doesn't have to go through a proof of that assertion with coins, or dice, or chess pieces, or pencils. He knows it, and that's that. He cannot conceive a different sum. There are mathematicians who say that three plus one is a tautology for four, a different way of saying "four" ... If three plus one can be two, or fourteen, then reason is madness.

Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process.

Life and death have been lacking in my life.

Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me and treating me badly.

If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it.

The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.

Why do you seem so annoyed at what I'm saying?" "Because we're too much like each other. I loathe your face, which is a caricature of mine, I loathe your voice, which is a mockery of mine, I loathe your pathetic syntax, which is my own.