I think... it is somehow very useful, and maybe even essential, for a fine artist to have to somehow make his peace on the canvas with all the things he cannot do. That is what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call 'personality,' or maybe even 'pain.'

The Earthlings behaved at all times as though there were a big eye in the sky—as though that big eye were ravenous for entertainment.

Here is a les­son in writ­ing. First rule: Do not use semi­colons. They are trans­ves­tite her­maph­ro­dites rep­re­sent­ing absolutely noth­ing. All they do is show you've been to col­lege.

How subservient to Jesus, or to a humane God Almighty, were the leaders of this country back in the 1840's, when Marx said such a supposedly evil thing about religion? They had made it perfectly legal to own human slaves, and weren't going to led women vote or hold public office, God forbid, for another eighty year.

I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That's why I served in World War II, and that's why I wrote books.

Nothing in this book is true.

Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.