“It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.”

“Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.”

“Rendall's first law of jealousy: jealousy does the cock harder and pussy wetter.”

“Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.”

“Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.”

“A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.”

“I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it.”