“I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.”

“The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.”

“How I hate this world. I would like to tear it apart with my own two hands if I could. I would like to dismantle the universe star by star, like a treeful of rotten fruit. Nor do I believe in progr...”

“Stein resented the sedative power of religion, or rather the repose available to those blissfully ignorant that the medicament was a fictitious blank. In this exile from peace of mind to which his ...”

“Human nature is pretty shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.”

“But I made an issue of the precise wording of the vows. I wanted liberalized ones, with no outmoded Pauline nonsense exacting from the bride the promise to 'obey' the groom. Here I put my foot down...”

“Life is a series of waves to be embraced and overcome.”

“Life is a tide; float on it. Go down with it and go up with it, but be detached. Then it is not difficult.”

“It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.”

“I am she who lifts the mountainsWhen she goes to hunt,Who wears mamba for a headbandAnd a lion for a belt.Beware!I swallow elephants wholeAnd pick my teeth with rhinoceros horns,I drink up rivers t...”

“Things is very primitive in the jungle - no place to shit, sleep on the ground like an animal, eat out of cans, no place to take a bath or nothing, clothes is all rotting off.”

“There is no universal language in the jungles; each species has its own language, and though the vocabulary of some is limited, as in the case of porcupines and vultures, the language of each speci...”