When they speak, dead frogs fall out of their mouths.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

It’s kind of a weird process being pitched by the company you’re already with.

When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

Is it weird in here, or is it just me?

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.

For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.

Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out.

I started out as a poet. I’ve always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It’s a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door.

On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

When I say that basically writing is a hard hustle, I don’t mean that it is a bad life, if one can get away with it. It’s the miracle of miracles to make a living by the typer.

Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

I have been told my eating habits are absolutely bizarre. But I don’t think so.

I feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.

For a creative writer possession of the ‚truth‘ is less important than emotional sincerity.

All men are equal before fish.

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

One word from the Lord is like a piece of gold to a believer, who is like a jeweler, shaping and hammering out the promise for a number of weeks.

There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

Pointing is a metaphor we all know. We’ve done a lot of studies and tests on that, and it’s much faster to do all kinds of functions, such as cutting and pasting, with a mouse, so it’s not only easier to use but more efficient.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.