There're many ways, my dear, to victimize people. The most insidious way is to persuade them that they're victims.

Like the Arthurian years at Camelot, the Sixties constituted a breakthrough, a fleeting moment of glory, a time when a significant little chunk of humanity briefly realised its moral potential and flirted with its neurological destiny, a collective spiritual awakening that flared brilliantly until the barbaric and mediocre impulses of the species drew tight once more the curtains of darkness.

Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sense, can be ignored with impunity by any novelist nimble enough to get away with it. There is, in fact, only one rule in writing fiction: Whatever works, works.

Not naive,' Conch shell had corrected him. 'He simply has not been taught to fear the things you fear.

I journey to the east, where I have been told, there are men who have taught death some manners.

Once one pays some attention to something, then you begin to see evidence of it everywhere.

Listen, I've been sick ever since I started working here, but today I'm well and I won't be in anymore.