People go to the movies instead of moving. Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

When I was fourteen, my father decided to initiate me into the ways of manhood, and took me to the local whorehouse. The woman spread her legs, and made me look between them. All I could see was something that looked like a dyin' orchid; consequently, I have never been comfortable around women or orchids.

At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.

A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.

The panic disappeared under those soothing old fingers and the breathing slowed down and stopped hurting the chest as if a fox was caught in it, and then at last Mr. Kroger began to lecture the boy as he used to, Pablo, he murmured, don't ever be so afraid of being lonely that you forget to be careful. Don't forget that you will find it sometimes but other times you won't be lucky, and those are the times when you have got to be patient, since patience is what you must have when you don't have luck.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people and with violent material. I don't regret having concerned myself with such people, because I think that most of us are disturbed.