A writer off-guard since the materials with which he works are so dangerous can expect agony as quick as a thunderclap.

The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another...

Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.

Her pleasure went on and on, and so did Ben’s. Ben could almost smell the gardenia, could almost see her pinning it on, her hands all thumbs.”You’re selling your store?” she said.There was radiance between...

The most exquisite pleasure in the practice of medicine comes from nudging a layman in the direction of terror, then bringing him back to safety again.

It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead.

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn’t really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: ”he wasn’t going to compose Beethoven’s Fifth.”

Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.

It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they performed an experiment. They put...

Oh Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagnetic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Volumes of Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia — what could we...

The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art.

You can’t help it but you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed — so you were a good man just the same.

You got troubles, I got troubles–everybody’s got troubles, whether they’ve got a lot of money or a little money or no money. When you get right down to it, I guess love and friendship and...

The mountebank told them that God was surely trying to kill them, possibly because He was through with them, and that they should have the good manners to die. This, as you can see, they...

that makes it damn nearly impossible for me to say anything. I’ve lost the knack of making sense. I speak gibberish to the civilized world, and it replies in kind.

Jesus–if Kilgore Trout could only write!” Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout’s unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

If somebody says, ”I love you,” to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol-holder requires? ”I love...

People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.

a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life

If somebody says ‘I love you’ to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? ‘I...

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds...

Absolutely everybody gets a little something.

Her face … was a one-of-a-kind, a surprising variation on a familiar theme – a variation that made observers think, Yes – that would be another very nice way for people to look. What Beatrice...

She turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.

We went to the New York World’s Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General...

Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so goddamn lonely anymore.

Please look at the imperfect human being God gave to love you once, and try to like me a little for what I really was, or, God willing, am. Then please, darling, become an imperfect...

Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. And Hewent away.

Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has...

The guide invited the crowd to imagine that they were looking across a desert at a mountain range on a day that was twinkling bright and clear. They could look at a peak or a...

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.

A Lovers a liar, to himself he lies. The truthful are loveless, like oysters their eyes

Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused...

I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns.

The trouble with the world is that people are still superstitious instead of scientific. If everybody would study science more, there wouldn’t be all the trouble there was.

I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can’t live without a culture anymore.

No more apologies! So we’re poor! All right, we’re poor! This is America! And America is one place in this sorry world where people Shouldn’t have to apologize for being poor. The question in America...

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

…because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre,...

There is nothing left of him but curiosity and a pair of eyes.

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.

Men are jerks. Women are psychotic.

The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.