Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all.

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.

How unjust life is, to make physical charm so immediately apparent or absent, when one can get away with vices untold for ever.

Family life itself, that safest, most traditional, most approved of female choices, is not a sanctuary: It is, perpetually, a dangerous place.

Scenery can be a violent stimulant.

Novels, since the birth of the genre, have been full of rejected, seduced, and abandoned maidens, whose proper fate is to die.

The human mind can bear plenty of reality but not too much intermittent gloom.

The women are always vixens or monsters. They can't just be normal people in the book.

Nothing fails like failure

Why can't people be both flexible and efficient?

Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.

Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God.

A world without radio is a deaf world.A world without television is a blind world. A a world without telephone is a dumb world. A world without communication is indeed a crippled world.

Never shake hands with a scorpion.

When you're dealing with an ambivalent relationship, you're constantly on guard, grappling with questions of trust.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

Taxpayers would likely be responsible for treating addicts

The worst insult I can inflict on life is that I do not reflect on its meaning.

The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes.

It takes three years to be an overnight success, sometimes more.

An instant can crush a brain and change the course of life, the course of history.