“Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.”

“Consistency, commonly thought of as a good thing, requires you to be as ignorant today as you wre a year ago.”

“Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated, but for our qualities.”

“Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one's training.”

“A complete life may be one ending in so full identification with the non-self that there is no self to die.”

“Rosette disappeared onto the dance floor. Wells sat in silence for a minute, watching the dancers. The worldwide cult of fast money spent stupidly. The worldwide cult of trying too hard. Moscow, Rio, Los Angeles, Tokyo, New York, London, Shanghai--the story was the same everywhere. The same overloud music, the same overpromoted brand names, the same fake tits, about as erotic as helium balloons. Everywhere an orgy of empty consumption and bad sex. Las Vegas was the cult's world headquarters, Donald Trump its patron saint. Wells had spent ten years in the barren mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He never wanted to live there again. But if he had to choose between an eternity there or in the supposed luxury of this club, he'd go back without a second thought.”

“I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.”