The sole virtue of losing your short-term memory is that it does free you to be your own editor.

Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is thegrowth of madness denied.

The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.

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.

The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.

A nation fights well in proportion to the amount of men and materials it has. And the other equation is that the individual soldier in that army is a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in the past.

What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.