Western civilization was declining too fast for comfort, but too slowly to be very exciting.

There is a similarity between juggling and composing on the typewriter. The trick is, when you spill something, make it look like a part of the act.

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

I rather like the smell of absurdity in the morning.

There are stories still in existence that I wrote when I was five. However, I did not get published until I was seven.

A book no more contains reality than a clock contains time. A book may measure so-called reality as a clock measures so-called time; a book may create an illusion of reality as a clock creates an illusion of time; a book may be real, just as a clock is real (both more real, perhaps, than those ideas to which they allude); but let's not kid ourselves - all a clock contains is wheels and springs and all a book contains is sentences.

And it rained a fever. And it rained a silence. And it rained a sacrifice. And it rained a miracle. And it rained sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem.