There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger.

California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.

How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group?

It is sometimes necessary to repeat what all know. All mapmakers should place the Mississippi in the same location and avoid originality.

Conquered people tend to be witty.

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting - the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.