“Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.”

“Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing you hold down the adjoining.”

“Well, I need a job. Something that'll leave me the free time I want.""I like the way you arrange your life. What do you intend to do with this free time?""I intend to use it." I didn't like the implication of this. Why should he need his time free and I be questioned?”

“Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows.... A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition.”

“What art thou?' Nothing. That's the answer. Nothing. In the heart of hearts- Nothing! So of course you can't stand that and want to be Something, and you try. But instead of being this Something, the man puts it over on everybody instead.”

“I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.”

“One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.”