I had gladly accepted working for my father when it was expected of me, and I had obediently learned everything about butchering that he could teach me. But he never could teach me to like the blood or even to be indifferent to it.

And the judgment is endless, though not because some deity judges you, but because your actions are naggingly being judged for all time by yourself.

Then, impulsively, with the tip of my tongue I began to lick the ink of the signature, patiently as a cat at his milk bowl I licked away until there was no longer the “O”, the “l”, the “i”, the “v”, the second “i”, the “a”–licked until the upswept tail was completely gone. I had drunk her writing. I had eaten her name. I had all I could do not to eat the whole thing.

I do not need the sermons of professional moralists to tell me how I should act. I certainly dont'need any God to tell me how. I am altogether capable of leading a moral existence without crediting beliefs that are impossible to substantiate and beyond credulity, that, to my mind, are nothing more than fairy tales for children held by adults, and with non more foundation in fact than a belief in Santa Claus.

Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists?

I know concrete. I know asphalt. I don't know flowers.

Because by leaving home you saved your life.

I was a little one, six, seven years old, but this was the business, and soon I accepted that the business was a mess.

Work–certain people yearn for work, any work, harsh or unsavory as it may be, to drain the harshness from their lives and drive from their minds the killing thoughts.

Weak people are not harmless. Their weakness can be their strength.