There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. I do not know who I am. Nor what I was. I cannot hear a sound. Pain is near that will be like no pain felt before.

Somerset Maugham ... wrote somewhere that "Nobody is any better than he ought to be."... I carried it along with me as a working philosophy, but I suppose that finally I would have to take exception to the thought ... or else the universe is just an elaborate clock.

The essence of spirit ... was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.

Writers don't have lifestyles. They just sit in little rooms and write.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it.