The great thing about my life is that everything I've done is a result of what I was when I was 12 or 13.

The gift of life is so precious that we should feel an obligation to pay back the universe for the gift of being alive.

I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while.

And some day well remember so much that well build the biggest goddam steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up.

Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for... are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.

How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you?