Quote collection
653 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads. Laughter, praise, honors, money, and the love of beautiful girls will be your only reward."
"One thing worse than self-hatred is chiggers."
"Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing."
"If a man’s imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever such fantasies of the supernal. He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him for the loss of the ancient dream."
"Those who dream of the joys of living in a space colony should live in a space colony."
"How long does it take to write a good book? All of the years that you've lived."
"Some of my ancestors fought in the American Revolution. A few more wore red coats, a few wore blue coats, and the rest wore no coats at all. We never did figure out who won that war."
"Nobody has so many friends that he can afford to lose one."
"The "terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years."
"Beauty is only skin deep; ugliness goes all the way through."
"When riding my old Harley a ninety per at midnight down the Via Roma in Naples, I kept one consolation firmly in mind: If anything goes wrong, I'll never have time to regret it."
"I wouldn't trade a good horse for the best Rolls-Royce ever made -- unless I could trade the Rolls for two good horses."
"What we need now are heroes and heroines, about a million of them, one brave deed is worth a thousand books. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul."
"I understand and sympathize with the reasonable needs of a reasonable number of people on a finite continent. All life depends upon other life. But what is happening today, in North America, is not rational use but irrational massacre. Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain."
"New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive anywhere, why live in New York?"
"America My Country: last nation on earth to abolish human slavery; first of all nations to drop the nuclear bomb on our fellow human beings."
"I have found through trial and error that I work best under duress. In fact I work only under duress."
"What is truth? I don't know and I'm sorry I brought it up."
"Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues."
"A life without tragedy would not be worth living."