"I don't kill flies but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell, 'Whoa, I'm way too high!'"

"For authentic living what is needed is the resolute confrontation of death."

"If you are not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at forty, you have no brain."

"History is the record of an encounter between character and circumstances."

"Dreams never hurt anybody if you keep working right behind the dreams to make as much of them become real as you can."

"Guns are neat little things, aren't they? They can kill extraordinary people with very little effort."

"Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner."

"Men generally believe what they wish."

"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody."

"Person to person, moment to moment, as we love, we change the world."

"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are."

"I wonder how so insupportable a thing as a bookseller was ever permitted to grow up in the Commonwealth. Many of our modern booksellers are but needless excrements, or rather vermin."