I wasn't aware of Ku Klux Klan as I was aware of the widespread assumption that African-Americans were dumber than white people. I think my father believed that. I think everybody white did.

God Almighty Himself must have been hilarious when human beings so mingled iron and water and fire as to make a railroad train!

As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or about any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide.

It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life.

I chose cultural anthropology, since it offered the greatest opportunity to write high-minded balderdash.

It seems to me that the most universal revolutionary wish now or ever is a wish for heaven, a wish by a human being to be honored by angels for something other than beauty or usefulness.

Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease.