“I expect the worst both from reviewers and sales and then, with any luck, I may be proved wrong.”

“The worst place anyone can start on is “wrong expectations”

“He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any many could have.”

“The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.”

“I might also say, regarding reviews and reviewers, that I have yet to read a review of any of my own books which I could not have written much better myself.”

“I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.”