“It was a fairy tale, no fooling. It was unreality becoming real. This frightened her. Because people don't care for unreality becoming real. It pricks their well-fed minds, you see, with something ...”

“Because there was only one thing worse than dying. And that was knowing you were going to die. And where. And how. (Death Ship)”

“God, how impossible life is without money. Nothing can ever overcome it, it's everything when it's anything. How can I write in peace with endless worries of money, money, money? (Disappearing Act)”

“I'm sitting in my office trying to squeeze a story from my head. It is that kind of morning when you feel like melting the typewriter into a bar of steel and clubbing yourself to death with it. (Ad...”

“God help me, he thought. God help all us poor wretches who could create and find we must lose our hearts for it because we cannot afford to spend our time at it. (Mad House)”

“Very well then! I'll write, write write. He let the words soak into his mind and displace all else.A man had a choice, after all. He devoted his life to his work or to his wife and children and hom...”

“All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.”

“To imbibe so much quiet is to become the music inside it.”

“Sometimes, there's no one around to tell you to be quiet... to be very, very quiet. Sometimes you need to be quiet when you're all alone.”

“The constant reprimands made me hyperconscious of my own performance, and so instead of getting rid of self, I had become embedded in the egoism I was supposed to transcend. Now I was beginning to ...”

“Silence is the mother of truth.”

“Silence is a powerful tool.”