The greater the power of any subjective state, the more total is a Romantic's assumption that everyone understands exactly what he is about to do, therefore waste not a moment by stopping to tell them.

There are days when I'll wake up and think, oh, I've really been something. You know, it won't be the same without me. And then there are days when I wake up and I say, 'Don't kid yourself. Your contribution was minimal. You changed very little. Everything you hated prospered'.

There are two kinds of brave men: those who are brave by the grace of nature, and those who are brave by an act of will.

Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the doom that may also be on the way. p.207

I don't read other writers because I'm writing all the time. It's too disturbing to read a writer with a good style when you're in the middle of putting your work together.

Amateurs... venture into scenes that a writer with more experience (and more professional concern) would bypass or eschew altogether.

A democracy depends upon people getting brighter all the time. Democracies are delicate. They're not just ipso facto and just go on and on.