“Never try to convey your idea to the audience — it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.”

“You wanna show them that you're really not scared,
You're playing with your life, this ain't no truth or dare,
They'll kick you then they'll beat you then they'll tell you it's fair,
So beat it.”

“Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

“I hate doctors! They'll do anything — anything to keep you coming to them. They'll sell their souls! What's worse, they'll sell yours, and you never know it till one day you find yourself in hell!”

“Others complain that I don’t make the fundamental idea plain enough. This is every writer’s dilemma. Your form is your meaning, and your meaning dictates the form. But what you try to convey is reality—the fact plus the feeling, a total complex experience of a real world. If you make your scheme too explicit, the framework shows and the book dies. If you hide it too thoroughly, the book has no meaning and therefore no form. It is a mess.”

“The appreciation of the merits of art (of the emotions it conveys) depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life, what is seen as good and evil. Good and evil are defined by religions.”

“I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can't be quite senseless because you are aware that it's senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. You
know what I mean?”

“My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them──by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.”

“Predicting the future is a hopeless, thankless task, with ridicule to begin with and, all too often, scorn to end with.”

“Don’t passively accept contagions. Turn your mind into an immune system that intercepts invading ideas, assesses them, and destroys the bad ones.”