“I would prefer to believe that things possess the power of recall, of recollection. That things are memoirs of the existences that once were theirs, if only we knew how to read them.”

“Hatred is unattractive, but it's also irresistible. If men were honest with themselves, they'd admit it's a stronger passion than lust.”

“To ennoble is to diminish by robbing people of their complexity, their completeness, of their humanity, which is always clouded by what gets stirred up at the bottom.”

“Talking of appearances, I would like my future readers to know that the picture of Jim and me that Thomas Hart Benton painted on the wall of the Missouri state capitol bears not the slightest resem...”

“Looking back on my life, I sigh. The caprice of youth goes with the wind, Ive no regrets.”

“The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.”

“The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have fol...”

“Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God's ways for us. We can have all the hell we want.”

“Freedom is an absolute state, there is no such thing as being half-free.”

“Imagination is cheap as long as you don't have to worry about the details.”

“Kill the women? No nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and youre always as polite as pie to them; and by-and-by they fall in love with you and never want t...”

“You can't pray a lie--I found that out.”

“If you think it aint dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way, by yourself, in the night, you try it once youll see.”