“Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used.”

“Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.”

“But once an idea for a novel seizes a writer...well, it’s like an inner fire that at first warms you and makes you feel good but then begins to eat you alive, burn you up from within. You can’t just walk away from the fire; it keeps burning. The only way to put it out is to write the book.”

“A brick can be neither good nor bad. A brick just is. And it isn’t, because I just stole it from you, which is good for me, and bad for you.
”

“Change itself is neither good nor bad, but knowledge is always useful.”

“Use them with care, and use them with respect as to the transformations they can achieve, and you have an extraordinary research tool. Go banging about with a psychedelic drug for a Saturday night turn-on, and you can get into a really bad place, psychologically. Know what you're using, decide just why you're using it, and you can have a rich experience. They're not addictive, and they're certainly not escapist, either, but they're exceptionally valuable tools for understanding the human mind, and how it works.”