We are here for no purpose, unless we can invent one.

The world is too serious. To get mad at a work of art-because maybe somebody, somewhere is blowing his stack over what I've done-is like getting mad at a hot fudge sundae.

Poverty is a relatively mild disease for even a very flimsy American soul, but uselessness will kill strong and weak souls alike, and kill every time.

I love you, Eliza,” I said. She thought about it. “No,” she said at last, “I don’t like it.” “Why not?” I said. “It’s as though you were pointing a gun at my head,” she said. “It’s just a way of getting somebody to say something they probably don’t mean. What else can I say, or anybody say, but, ‘I love you, too’?

If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

We were German-Americans in a British colony, so we were outsiders.

One thing I found out was that we need extended families. We need gangs. And, of course, if they're tribes and clans and so forth have been dispersed by the industrial revolution by people looking for work wherever they can find it. And a nuclear family, a man, a woman and kids and a dog and cat is no survival scheme at all. Horribly vulnerable.