Not facing a fire doesn't put it out.

What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both your fingers, until your fingers are broken?

But I think the spirit of man is a good adversary

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.

William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. "In the time of your life--live!" That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, and the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition.

If people behaved in the same way nations do they would all be put in straitjackets.

It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write.