The Circle Theatre, black people had to sit in the balcony. Any theater with a balcony, black people had to sit up there. Black people couldn't check into any hotel except their own. And black people couldn't eat anywhere except in their own restaurants.

Luck is not the hand of God.... Luck is the way the wind swirls and the dust settles eons after God has passed by.

If I am ever put to death on the hook, expect a very human performance.

As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.

Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow.