“When hit with a genius idea, people tend to say, "Well, if I sat down in a chair and really thought about it, I could have had that genius idea, too." But they didn't--and even if they'd wanted to, it could never have happened.”

“I had to feign interest in all this nonsense until I could ask when I could come over and sit on his face. I didn't say that out loud, of course. I never say the things I really want to. If I did, I'd have no friends.”

“Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.”

“Yesterday I was thinking about the whole idea of genius and creative people, and the notion that if you create some magical art, somehow that exempts you from having to pay attention to the small things.”

“He had been taught that language was essentially inadequate, that it could never speak what was there, that it only spoke itself.He thought about the death mask. He could and could not say that the mask and the man were dead. What had happened to him was that the ways in which it could be said had become more interesting than the idea that it could not.”

“Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.”