I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty.

The pimp has a grin, never a smile.

Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.

There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts. The fragility and delicacy of the former are of the same nature as the brutal insensitivity of the latter.

A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.

Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.

It's the hour when night breaks away from the day, my dove, let me go.

My heart's in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand's in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.

Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.

Solitude, as I understand it, does not signify an unhappy state, but rather secret royalty, profound incommunicability yet a more or less obscure knowledge of an invulnerable singularity.

The time for reasoning is past; now's the time to get steamed up and fight like mad.

Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.

I love you"s are exhanged excessively under our roof. Cancer teaches you how important and critical that is.

As a single withered tree, if set aflame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.

Look twice before you leap.

I am not optimistic, but I've never been optimistic about humankind or America. The evidence never looks good in terms of forces for good actually becoming prominent.

There's nothing like a mission to save the world to liven up a vacation.

Our minds are rendered buoyant by exercise.

Nearly all rich and powerful people are not notably talented, educated, charming or good-looking. They become rich and powerful by wanting to be rich and powerful.

All I can do is write about whatever grabs me.

Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.