“I have know a thousand scamps; but I never met one who considered himself so. Self-knowledge isn't so common.”

“I have never met anyone who laughs so much with so little reason.”

“Breaking my neck was the best thing that ever happened to me. I have an Olympic medal. I've been to so many countries I would never have been, met so many people I would never have met. I've done more in the chair, ... than a whole hell of a lot of people who aren't in chairs.”

“It isn't dying I'm afraid of, it isn't that at all; I know what it is to die, I've died already. It is the endless obliteration, the knowledge that there will never be anything else. That's what I can't stand, to try so hard and to end in nothing. You know what I mean, don't you? ... I really loved to write.”

“But,' I reminded myself, 'it's common knowledge that life isn't worth living, anyhow.”

“I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose.”