 A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ. |
| Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals. |
| The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true. |
| Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard. |
| Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. |
| So in our pride we ordered for breakfast an omelet, toast and coffee and what has just arrived is a tomato salad with onions, a dish of pickles, a big slice of watermelon and two bottles of cream soda. |
| These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new. |
| I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature. |
| I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts. |
| In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable. |
| A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. |
| No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself. |
| The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong. |
| It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. |
| It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. |
| No one wants advice - only corroboration. |
| Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time. |
| I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. |
| The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business. |
| Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it. |
