“Life is a wretched gray Saturday, but it has to be lived through.”

“The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”

“Go on, do me in, you bastard cowards, I don't want to live anyway, not in a stinking world like this one.' I told Dim to lay off a bit then, because it used to interest me sometimes to slooshy what some of these starry decreps had to say about life and the world. I said: 'Oh. And what's stinking about it?”

“Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.”

“Life is, of course, terrible.”

“Life's only choosing when to die. Life's a big postponement because the choice is so difficult. It's a tremendous relief not to have to choose.”

“English is a curiously expressive language. Womb, room, tomb. It sums up living in three words.”