Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.

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People always clap for the wrong reasons.

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All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

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The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

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It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

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You think of the book you'd most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.

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I love to write and I assure you I write regularly. But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.

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Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew--knew--that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?

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I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.

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I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.

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