It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.

Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.

Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don't make compromises. Don't worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you can build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.

I feel that opiates - I include opium and all its derivatives, such as morphine, heroin, pantopon, etc. - are quite useless for any sort of creative work, useful though they may be for routine work. Much of the hard physical work in the Far East is done by opium addicts.

We are setting out to create new worlds, new beings, new modes of consciousness.

In homosexual sex you know exactly what the other person is feeling, so you are identifying with the other person completely. In heterosexual sex you have no idea what the other person is feeling.

The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not.