"It is clear to see that it is not them but me, who had lost my self-identity. As I hide behind these books I read, while scribbling my poetry, like art could save a wretch like me, with some ideal ideology that no one can hope to achieve. And I am never real; it is just a sketch of me. And everything I have made is trite and cheap and a waste of paint, of tape, of time"

"To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would f…"

"A magical portal opened inside my mind and conducted me into an astonishing world. … Before this moment I had divined but had never known with such positiveness that the world is extremely large and t…"

"Never sat down and thought: “I’m going to create a new genre.” I just sat down and wrote a book that I wanted to read but couldn’t find. In retrospect, I don’t think it’s a new genre; it’s just a nove…"

"And grant that a man read all the books of music that ever were wrote, I shall not allow that music is or can be understood out of them, no more than the taste of meats out of cookish receipt books."