"This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.War is god."
— Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)

"America...just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable"
— Hunter S. Thompson

"For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled. "
— Hunter S. Thompson

"It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top. "
— Hunter S. Thompson

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes."
— Walt Whitman

"I'm not the guy who wins awards and gets mentioned in magazines."
— Jhonen Vasquez

"But I couldn't draw as fast as she requested. Thus, I tried to create the worst abomination of a comic that I could, so as to make her not want comics anymore. That abomination, my friends, was Happy Noodle Boy. "
— Jhonen Vasquez

"I don't do my work for any kind of group in particular, except for hobos, who just plain kick ass and light up my life. "
— Jhonen Vasquez

"I think there is something a little too self conscious about enjoying being an outsider. "
— Jhonen Vasquez

"Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly."
— Alan Lightman (Einstein's Dreams)

"American culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc. "
— Katherine Dunn

"But I think everybody should write. I think those people with stories who don't write should be stomped on. "
— Katherine Dunn

"I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out. "
— Katherine Dunn

"Oh, of course, I always feel unconfident. "
— Katherine Dunn

"Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way."
— David Lynch

"Money doesn't mind if we say it's evil, it goes from strength to strength. It's a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy."
— Martin Amis (Money)

"Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal."
— Martin Amis

"Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Mother Night)