The world was a maze of mysteries and puzzles, but it was a world of rational design that did not present puzzles without answers. There was always an answer.

I really believe that everyone has a talent, ability, or skill that he can mine to support himself and to succeed in life.

Some days I'm lucky to squeeze out a page of copy that pleases me, but I get as many as six or seven pages on a very good day; the average is probably three pages.

It's difficult to spend time in any carnival or amusement park and not realize that a repressed fear of death may be the one emotion that is constant in the human heart even if, most of the time, it is confined to the unconscious as we go about our business. Thrill rides offer us a chance to acknowledge our ever-present dread, to release the tension that arises from repression of it, and to subtly delude ourselves with the illusion of invulnerability that surviving the Big Drop can provide.

They said there was no rest for the wicked. In fact, there was rest neither for the virtuous nor the wicked, nor for guys like Billy, who were uncommitted regarding the whole idea of virtue versus wickedness and who were just trying to do their jobs.

Damn it, there is no world if there is not a human eye to see it, no world of any purpose or meaning, no world of more importance than is any barren planet now circling a burnt-out sun. The world can’t see itself and marvel at its wonders. The mystery of consciousness makes reality, and there is no reality without a fully conscious species to apprehend it. You think the world precious because you’re here to see it. We are the world and the world is us, and neither can be but a dream of no importance without the other.