For self-realization, a rebel demands a strong authority, a worthy opponent, God to his Lucifer.

What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake.

You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.

Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility.

I was going to get myself recognized at any price. If I could not win fame by goodness, I was ready to do it by badness.

Yet friendship, I believe, is essential to intellectuals. It is probably the growth hormone the mind requires as it begins its activity of producing and exchanging ideas. You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk. In the course of my history, not love or marriage so much as friendship has promoted growth.

For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.