28 quotes
The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.
A Deadly Shade of Gold (1965)
Any man who outgrows the myths of childhood is ninety-nine percent aware and convinced of his own mortality.
Dress Her in Indigo (1969)
In many ways life is less random than we think.
One Fearful Yellow Eye (1966)
Statistically it is probably the one city in the world where the most people have been killed in arguments over professional athletes.
One Fearful Yellow Eye (1966)
Education is something that should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefor.
A Purple Place for Dying (1964)
Every day, no matter how you fight it, you learn a little more about yourself, and all most of it does is teach humility.
One Fearful Yellow Eye (1966)
When you see the ugliness behind the tears of another person, it makes you take a closer look at your own.
The Green Ripper (1979)
Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.
The Last One Left (1967)
When a woman forgets gossip, McGee, she is nearing the end of her road.
Nightmare in Pink (1964)
She bets the doubles and the parlays, a guaranteed way to stay busted.
One Fearful Yellow Eye (1966)
The only thing that prisons demonstrably cure is heterosexuality.
The Long Lavender Look (1970)
I can bend my own rules way, way over, but there is a place where I finally stop bending them.
The Turquoise Lament (1973)
I think there is some kind of divine order in the universe. Every leaf on every tree in the world is unique.
A Deadly Shade of Gold (1965)
It's no good telling somebody they're trying too hard. It's very much like ordering a child to go stand in a corner for a half hour and never once think about elephants.
The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper (1965)
Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather.
The Turquoise Lament (1973)
Maybe this planet is one of the discarded mistakes. Maybe it's one of the victories. We'll never know.
A Deadly Shade of Gold (1965)
I know just enough about myself to know I cannot settle for one of those simplifications which indignant people seize upon to make understandable a world too complex for their comprehension.
A Deadly Shade of Gold (1965)
I am not suited to the role of going around selling the life-can-be-beautiful idea. It can be, indeed. But you don't buy the concept from your friendly door-to-door lecture salesman.
The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper (1965)
I am wary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess we have built into such a glittering top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of maintaining it.
The Deep Blue Good-by (1964)
Now it stands to reason, mister, any damn fool stares into the sun long enough, he'll end up seeing exactly what some other damn fool tells him he's going to see.