Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.
They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale.
I take this continent with me into the grave.
Why then you’re as mad as me. No, madder. For I distrust ‘reality’ and its moron mother, the universe, while you fasten your innocence to fallible devices which pretend at happy endings.
How many times can a man go down and still be alive?
His flesh took paleness from his bones.
I don’t believe in being serious about anything. I think life is too serious to be taken seriously.
The river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for supper.
The father hesitated only a moment. He felt the vague pain in his chest. If I run, he thought, what will happen? Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts. And we’ve done fine tonight. Even Death can’t spoil it.
Somewhere in him, a shadow turned mournfully over. You had to run with a night like this so the sadness could not hurt.
And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a women half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between.
Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there was it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away.
Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds.
Do three things each night before you go to bed: read a poem, read a short story, read an essay.
I don’t have a computer. A computer’s a typewriter. I already have a typewriter.
Write 1000 words a day. That’s only about four pages, but force yourself to do it. Put your finger down your throat and throw up. That’s what writing’s all about.
Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do.
Ideas result from the collision of metaphors inside the head.
They are so confident that they will run on forever. But they won’t run on. They don’t know that this is all one huge big blazing meteor that makes a pretty fire in space, but that some day it’ll have to hit.
You have to learn to take rejection not as an indication of personal failing but as a wrong address.