I came to believe that being a private detective was the work I was meant to do.

I never was a person who wanted a handout. I was a cafeteria worker. I'm not too proud to ask the Best Western manager to give me a job. I have cleaned homes.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.

I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains no pertinent facts.

Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books. I cannot think of any time when materialization was in any way hampered by the presence of books.

So long as you write it away regularly nothing can really hurt you.

Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.

I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from there.

I delight in what I fear.

The sight of one's own heart is degrading; people are not meant to look inward - that's why they've been given bodies, to hide their souls.

We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.

Believe in yourself and the beauty of your dreams.

One of the best confidence builder is experience.

An act of kindness is uplifting to the soul.

Only a rose would make a man turn the shade of his desire.

It's better to face madness with a plan than to sit still and let it take you in pieces.

The happy combination of fortuitous circumstances.

Keep a little space in your heart for the improbable. You won't regret it.

The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it.

If I can keep this up and nothing interferes with my progress, one of these days I might be able to contribute something to the world.

The worst thing you can do, despite the innumerable obstacles we confront, is to not try.