Like all real heroes, Charley had a fatal flaw. He refused to believe that he had gonorrhea, whereas the truth was that he did.

I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair.

To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.

Writers can treat their mental illnesses every day.

Nowadays, of course, just about our only solvent industry is the merchandising of death, bankrolled by our grandchildren, so that the message of our principal art forms, movies and television and political speeches and newspaper columns, for the sake of the economy, simply has to be this: War is hell, all right, but the only way a boy can become a man is in a shoot-out of some kind, preferably, but by no means necessarily, on a battlefield.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

[I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think.