Don't never participate in no bad scenes, he reminded himself; that was his motto in life.

How'd you like to gaze at a beer can throughout eternity? It might not be so bad. There'd be nothing to fear.

Death hides within every religion. And at any time it can flash forth-not with healing in its wings but with poison, with that which wounds.

Whom the gods notice they destroy.

And of course, in my writing, there is the constant theme of music, love of, preoccupation with, music. Music is the single thread making my life into a coherency.

Why does a man cry? he wondered. Not like a woman; not for that. Not for sentiment. A man cries over the loss of something, something alive. A man can cry over a sick animal that he knows won't make it. The death of a child: a man can cry for that. But not because things are sad. A man, he thought, cries not for the future or the past but for the present.

The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than a razor’s edge, sharper than a hound’s tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom.