I reckon if I ever marry, she will have to be a strong woman in a circus or something.

What shall a man say when a friend has vanished behind the doors of Death? A mere tangle of barren words, only words.

Barbarianism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarianism must ultimately triumph

The poem you sent me was as fiery and virile as anything you've ever written - or anybody else, for that matter. Especially the second part went to my brain like the flaming liquor of insanity. No one else besides Jack London has the power to move me just that way.

All fled—all done, so lift me on the pyre— The Feast is over, and the lamps expire.

I am unable to rouse much interest in any highly civilized race, country or epoch, including this one.

The sea-road is good for wanderers and landless men. There is quenching of thirst on the grey paths of the winds, and the flying clouds to still the sting of lost dreams.

The more I see of what you call civilization, the more highly I think of what you call savagery!

The printed page was like wine to me.

The only safe enemy was a headless enemy.

My body seems a mere encumbrance to me; an imbecillic wagon, hitched to the horse of desire, which is the soul.

I have put off the past like a worn-out cloak.

It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments.

It is not pleasant to come upon Death in a lonely place at midnight.

I have accomplished little enough, but such as it is, it is the result of my own efforts.

We're making tin gods out of those poor buffoons in Hollywood; I dote on movies and appreciate the scanty art therein but I consider the profession about the most debased and debasing I know.

I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, & am content.

By this axe I rule!

I don't believe I ever saw an Oklahoman who wouldn't fight at the drop of a hat -- and frequently drop the hat himself.

Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.

A woman in such an emotional tempest is as perilous as a blind cobra to any about her.

But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood.

A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

I have known many gods. He who denies them is blind as he who trusts them too deeply.

It is only the promise of death that makes life worth living.

For man's only weapon is courage that flinches not from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions of Hell can stand.

How can I wear the harness of toil And sweat at the daily round, While in my soul forever The drums of Pictdom sound?

What always was must always be.

Men are but men, and the greatest men are they who soonest learn the simpler things.

Lift that scimitar against me, you Hyrkanian pig and I'll gut you where you stand!

A true fanatic, his promptings were reasons enough for his actions.

But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood, restless harbingers of violence and bloodshed, knowing no other path....

Then, since all great poets are strange in their speech and actions, he must have achieved great fame, for his actions and conversations were the strangest of any man I ever knew.

It is an ill thing to meet a man you thought dead in the woodland at dusk.

Every twinge of sensation, even of agony, was a negation of death.

I see in the papers where Roy Guthrie committed suicide. Why, I wonder?

While we may open the books of the past, we may but grant flying glances of the future, through the mist that veils it.

I have gone into yesterday and tomorrow and both were as real as today -- which is like the dreams of ghosts!

No man can be convinced when he will not.

It was made from the black lotus, whose blossoms wave in the lost jungles of Khitai, where only the yellow-skulled priests of Yun dwell. Those blossoms strike dead any who smell of them.

I have come to believe that mankind eternally hovers on the brinks of secret oceans of which it knows nothing.