And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it.
In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector.
Love is infinitely more endurable than hate.
Everybody is friends when things are bad enough.
But don’t try to find an untroublesome woman. She will dull out on you. What makes a woman good in bed makes it impossible for her to live alone.
In the fall the war was always there but we did not go to it any more.
However you make your living is where your talent lies.
Every day above earth is a good day.
Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.
A writer can be compared to a well. There are as many kinds of wells as there are writers. The important thing is to have good water in the well, and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry and wait for it to refill.
You never understand anybody that loves you.
Wars are Spinach. Life in general is the tough part. In war all you have to do is not worry and know how to read a map and co-ordinates.
This looking and not seeing things was a great sin, I thought, and one that was easy to fall into. It was always the beginning of something bad and I thought that we did not deserve to live in the world if we did not see it.
No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it’s not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough.
Shooting gives me a good feeling. It is faster than baseball and you are out on one strike.
Write as well as you can and finish what you start.
Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the license bureau to a bar for a drink. The bartender said, “What will you have, sir?” And I said, “A glass of hemlock.”
You must hold hard to life and do it. But life is a cheap thing beside a man’s work. The only thing is that you need it. Hold it tight.
There are so many good ones to paint and if you paint as well as you really can and keep out of all other things and do that, it is the true thing.
Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses would go.