“Not altogether a fool," said G., "but then he's a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool.""True," said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his meerschaum, "although I have been guilty of certain doggerel myself.”

“True rebels hate their own rebellion. They know by experience that it is not a cool and glamorous lifestyle; it takes a courageous fool to say things that have not been said and to do things that have not been done.”

“I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil; the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil—I don't know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place—and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won’t pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other.”

“Howard thought, Is it not true: A move of the head, a step to the left or right, and we change from wise, decent, loyal people to conceited fools? Light changes, our eyes blink and see the world from the slightest difference of perspective and our place in it has changed infinitely: Sun catches cheap plate flaking--I am a tinker; the moon is an egg glowing in its nest of leafless trees--I am a poet; a brochure for an asylum is on the dresser--I am an epileptic, insane; the house is behind me--I am a fugitive. His despair had not come from the fact that he was a fool; he knew he was a fool. The despair came from the fact that his wife saw him as a fool, as a useless tinker, a copier of bad verses from two-penny religious magazines, an epileptic, and could find no reason to turn her head and see him as something better.”

“Fool that I am," said he,"that I did not tear out my heart the day I resolved to revenge myself".”

“I can't go to Amsterdam. One of my doctors thinks it's a bad idea."He was quiet for a second. "God," he said. "I should've just paid for it myself. Should've just taken you straight from the Funky Bones to Amsterdam.""But then I would've had a probably fatal episode of deoxygenation in Amsterdam, and my body would have been shipped home in the cargo hold of an airplane," I said. "Well, yeah," he said. "But before that, my grand romantic gesture would have totally gotten me laid."I laughed pretty hard, hard enought that I felt where the chest tube had been. "You laugh because it's true," he said.I laughed again."It's true, isn't it!" "Probably not," I said, and then after a moment added, "although you never know.”