“My name is Stephen Leeds, and I am perfectly sane. My hallucinations, however, are all quite mad.”

“You aren't insane, then." "Heavens no," I said. I eyed her. "You don't accept that."You see people that aren't there Mr. Leeds. It's a difficult fact to get around."And, yet, I live a good life," I said. "Tell me. Why would you consider me insane, but the man who can't hold a job, who cheats on his wife, who can't keep his temper in check, you call him sane?”

“I am what the universe made me to be, my dear.”

“My behavior is nonetheless, deplorable. Unfortunately, I'm quite prone to such bouts of deplorability--take for instance, my fondness for reading books at the dinner table.”

“I consider myself to be a man of principle. But, what man does not? Even the cutthroat, I have noticed, considers his actions "moral" after a fashion.Perhaps another person, reading of my life, would name me a religious tyrant. He could call me arrogant. What is to make that man's opinion any less valid than my own?I guess it all comes down to one fact: In the end, I'm the one with the armies.”

“For me, if I have writer’s block it means I know that what I am writing is not working quite right and I need to go back and fix what is not right. And once I do that I can write onward. Sometimes writer’s block is just I’m in a funk that day and my writing just isn’t working. In that case I write anyway and then throw it away. You can always write. Writer's block is 'I can't write because what I'm writing is crap.”

“In the end, I worry that my arrogance shall destroy us all.”