As a young man just beginning to publish some short fiction in the t&a magazines, I was fairly optimistic about my chances of getting published; I knew that I had some game, as the basketball players say these days, and I also felt that time was on my side; sooner or later the best-selling writers of the sixties and seventies would either die or go senile, making room for newcomers like me.

It's best to have your tools with you. If you don't, you're apt to find something you didn't expect and get discouraged.

The devil's voice is sweet to hear.

A woman who would steal your love when your love was really all you had to give was not much of a woman.

How else could he go on, except with merciful incomprehension held before him like a shield? How could anyone?

There’s always someone who knows something.

He was a clot looking for a place to happen, a splinter of bone hunting a soft organ to puncture, a lonely lunatic cell looking for a mate - they would set up housekeeping and raise themselves a cozy little malignant tumor.