“Confirmations, corroborations rather than disillusionment. At eighteen I was as much of a philosopher as I ever will be.”

“He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.”

“What if at the last moment, when the banquet table is set and the cymbals clash, there should appear suddenly, and wholly without warning, a silver platter on which even the blind could see that there is nothing more, and nothing less, than two enormous lumps of shit. That, I believe would be more miraculous than anything which man has looked forward to. It would be miraculous because it would be undreamed of. It would be more miraculous than even the wildest dream because anybody could imagine the possibility but nobody ever has, and probably nobody ever again will.”

“I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.”

“It’s like a man in the trenchesagain: he doesn’t know any more why he should go on living, becauseif he escapes now he’ll only be caught later, but he goes on justthe same, and even though he has the soul of a cockroach and hasadmitted as much to himself, give him a gun or a knife or even justhis bare nails, and he’ll go on slaughtering and slaughtering, he’dslaughter a million men rather than stop and ask himself why.”

“I study you so much to discover the possible flaws, the weak points, the danger zones. I don’t find them—not any. That means I am in love, blind, blind. To be blind forever.”

“I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.”