“I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever.”

“I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That's bad enough for me.”

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”

“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”

“I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.”

“Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights...sexual intercourse!...His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.”

“Man is the only animal who blushes...or needs to.”