“Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.”

“The standards for horror fiction should be no less than those for 'serious literary' fiction in which originality of concept, depth of characters, and attentiveness to language are vitally important.”

“I'm sure all that you've heard is just the usual gossip, invented to injure feelings rather than illuminate truth.”

“When you give up struggle, there's a kind of love. ”

“....whatever you do, with whom you do it or whether you do it alone, and when, and how, and why, to what mysterious end—it's balanced against nothing, against Death and forgetting. You balanced against oblivion.”

“Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as the past is lost, or is it enough to know yes we lived then, and we are living now, and the connection must be there? Like a river hundreds of miles long exists both at its source and at its mouth, simultaneously?”

“No American sport or activity has been so consistently and so passionately under attack as boxing, for "moral" as we'll as other reasons. And no American sport evokes so ambivalent a response in its defenders: when asked the familiar question "How can you watch . . . ?" the boxing aficionado really has no answer. He can talk about boxing only with others like himself.”