“Advertising - A judicious mixture of flattery and threats.”

“The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enqui...”

“Now, the essence, the very spirit of Christmas is that we first make believe a thing is so, and lo, it presently turns out to be so.”

“I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.”

“The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.”

“Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.”

“When I started writingI was a sick teenagedfuck inside who partlythought I was the newMarquis de Sade, a bodydoomed to communicatewith Satan who was us-ing my sickness as hishome away from home,and...”

“A witty saying proves nothing.”

“There are no facts only interpretations.”

“Having friends was weird . . . but in a good way.”

“I always make sure that the world will prove me right. It gives me the freedom to contradict myself.”

“My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been love...”