“I had decided against religion a couple of years back. If it were true, it made fools out of people, or it drew fools. And if it weren't true, the fools were all the more foolish.What I need is a good doctor, I thought.You either lived or died.”

“I wasn't sleeping on the streets at night. Of course, there were a lot of good people sleeping in the streets. They weren't fools, they just didn't fit into the needed machinery of the moment. And those needs kept altering.”

“So, that’s what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That’s what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me.”

“There were no judgments to be made, yet out of necessity one had to select. Beyond good and evil was all right in theory, but to go on living one had to select: some were kinder than others, some were simply more interested in you, and sometimes the outwardly beautiful and inwardly cold were necessary. The kinder ones fucked better, really, and after you were around them a while they seemed beautiful because they were.”

“People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it.”

“and our few good times will be rare because we have the critical senseand are not easy to fool with laughter”

“I held herwrists and then I got it through the eyes: hatred,centuries deep and true. I was wrong and graceless andsick. all the things I had learned had been wasted.there was no creature living as foul as Iand all my poems werefalse.”