“No prize , however great can justify an ounce of self deception or a small departure of the ugly facts. ( Notes from Underground)”

“It's great to be anywhere as a writer. It saves you from implication in the ugliness of the place and justifies your being there. You can spend all day jerking off as long as you describe it well.”

“Since I am I, I must make an act of self-surrender, however small or however easy, in living to God rather than to my self.”

“Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.”

“Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power.”

“Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain -- from cosmology to psychology to economics -- has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture.Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.”