The sky over Patusan was blood-red, immense, streaming like an open vein. An enormous sun nestled crimson amongst the treetops, and the forest below had a black and forbidding face.

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

Never test another man by your own weakness.

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?

I had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream, no matter whether over mud or over stones.

Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention?

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.

Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream.

It was a dark story.

This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations.

Fame itself... doesn't really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant.

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.

Half the time I don't know what I'm trying to say.

A Supreme Court decision does not establish a "supreme law of the land" that is binding on all persons and parts of government, henceforth and forevermore.

I feel blessed that I get to be part of entertaining people in any capacity.

People can be anonymous when they go on blogs and say crazy things that they would never have the courage to say to your face.

The rules are very strict.

I think I came back from America a funnier and nicer person than I went.

Pseudoscience is like a virus. At low levels, it's no big deal, but when it reaches a certain threshold it becomes sickening.