“Life is trying things to see if they work.”

“I have two rules in life - to hell with it, whatever it is, and get your work done.”

“The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you're the same fool.”

“Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't "try" to do things. You simply "must" do things.”

“What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?”

“The things you're looking for...are in the world, but the only way the average chap will see ninety-nine percent of them is in a book.”

“They knew how to live with nature and get along with nature. They didn't try too hard to be all men and no animal. That's the mistake we made when Darwin showed up. We embraced him and Huxley and Freud, all smiles. And then we discovered that Darwin and our religions didn't mix. Or at least we didn't think they did. We were fools. We tried to budge Darwin and Huxley and Freud. They wouldn't move very well. So, like idiots, we tried knocking down religion. We succeeded pretty well. We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than a frustrated outflinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given us answer to all things. But it all went down the drain with Freud and Darwin. We were and still are lost people.”