It's fortunate that I am a writer, because that has helped me understand the properties of words. They are what have made life complex. In the battle for status in the animal kingdom, power and aggressiveness have been all-important. But among humans, once they acquired speech, all that changed.

The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.

Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: "You're either on the bus...or off the bus.

I never forget. I never forgive. I can wait. I find it very easy to harbor a grudge. I have scores to settle.

My father was the editor of an agricultural magazine called 'The Southern Planter.' He didn't think of himself as a writer. He was a scientist, an agronomist, but I thought of him as a writer because I'd seen him working at his desk. I just assumed that I was going to do that, that I was going to be a writer.

A lie may fool someone else, but it tells you the truth: you're weak.

And - of course! - the Non-people. The whole freaking world was full of people who were bound to tell you they weren't qualified to do this or that but they were determined to go ahead and do just that thing anyway.