I don't think he was knowable. I mean, when most people talk about knowing somebody a lot or a little, they're talking about the secrets they've been told or haven't been told. They're talking about intimate things, family things, love things," that nice old lady said to me. "Mr. Hoenikker had all those things in his life, the way every living person has to, but they weren't the main things with him.

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?

We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.

Let there be nothing harmonious about our children's playthings, lest they grow up expecting peace and order, and be eaten alive.

Where is home? I've wondered where home is, and I realized, it's not Mars or someplace like that, it's Indianapolis when I was nine years old. I had a brother and a sister, a cat and a dog, and a mother and a father and uncles and aunts. And there's no way I can get there again.

We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. I used to think that science would save us, and science certainly tried. But we can't stand any more tremendous explosions, either for or against democracy.

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