Don't bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself.

Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets.

A writer strives to express a universal truth in the way that rings the most bells in the shortest amount of time.

Life is a process of preparing to be dead for a long time.

It's not when you realize that nothing can help you — religion, pride, anything — it's when you realize that you don't need any aid.

The artist is still a little like the old court jester. He's supposed to speak his vicious paradoxes with some sense in them, but he isn't part of whatever the fabric is that makes a nation.

When the switch fell I could feel it upon my flesh; when it welted and ridged it was my blood that ran, and I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever.