 There is no friend as loyal as a book. |
| 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. |
| Man is not made for defeat. |
| Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war. |
| There's no one thing that is true. They're all true. |
| My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. |
| If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water. |
| When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first. |
| When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea. |
| In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason. |
| But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. |
| That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way. |
| I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen. |
| The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. |
| If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. |
| That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward. |
| An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools. |
| Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor. |
| Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts. |
| Never confuse movement with action. |
