“To live intensely is a basic human necessity.”

“I love humanity. It’s people I don’t like.”

“Greasy food might not be good for your body, but it does wonders for the soul. A healthy diet may prolong your life, but what would you have to live for? What is the point of living to a hundred if you have to subsist on bland food? One may as well die of boredom.”

“Humans have terrible passions that can go either way: create or destroy, it all depends on where they emerge. Art is not a tranquil occupation. What is peaceful about wrestling with nothingness? If the process isn’t brutal, it’s just decor. Your choice: violence towards others, or violence to yourself?”

“As you go through life, you learn many lessons. Unfortunately these lessons only apply to the specific instances in which you learned them. Therefore you can expect to make horrible mistakes no matter how long you live.”

“He made writing look easy and critics hate that. They like evidence of a struggle, of creative agony, wringing the masterpiece out of one’s guts. After all, most critics think of themselves as writers, or had attempted to become writers. This leads to the bizarre situation in which failed writers pass judgment on writers who actually write for a living.”

“This is not what death should be. Death, the reason for religion, the subject of great literature, the certainty we spend our lives warding off, the giant mystery that looms over everything we do, death should be spectacular, not pity-inducing, a bang and not a whimper. A huge ball of fire, a shower of sparks, a final charge into the ranks of your enemies, a terrific explosion, a backward dive into the fiery pit. Not. . .this.”