This is what I find encouraging about the writing trades: ... They allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.

It pains me even now, even a million years later, to write about such human misbehaviour. A million years later, I feel like apologizing for the human race. That’s all I can say.

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

The youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation.

I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that's not saying much.

How complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

There was a still life on Billy's bedside table-two pills, an ashtray with three lipstick-stained cigarettes in it, one cigarette still burning, and a glass of water. The water was dead. So it goes. Air was trying to get out of the dead water. Bubbles were clinging to the walls of the glass, too weak to climb out.