So it was the hand that started it all . . . His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms . . . His hands were ravenous.

Important thing is not the me that's lying here, but the me that's sitting on the edge of the bed looking back at me, and the me that's downstairs cooking supper, or out in the garage under the car, or in the library reading. All the new parts, they count. I'm not really dying today. No person ever died that had a family.

Grandfather's been dead all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by God, in the convolutions of my brain you'd find the big ridges of his thumbprint. He touched me. As I said earlier, he was a sculptor. 'I hate a Roman named Status Quo!' he said to me. 'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

Tell us again, for we forget, that work done without love is stillborn, mindless, and lost in the very hour of its deliverance.

Melt all the guns, I thought, break the knives, burn the guillotines-and the malicious will still write letters that kill.

The important thing of any time you live in is to be in love yourself. You float above your time then. It's what you want that counts, not what your time wants.

I have fun with ideas; I play with them.