What a writer's obituary should read - he wrote the books, then he died.

I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail...because he has a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not.

The poets are almost always wrong about the facts... That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth...

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

You're looking, sir, at a very dull survivor of a very gaudy life. Crippled, paralyzed in both legs. Very little I can eat, and my sleep is so near waking that it's hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider.

We could live like counts. ... If all that money is out there, I might as well hack a little on the side and put the novel off.