Every day above earth is a good day.
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.
There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring.
Ascensions into heaven are like falling leaves sad and happy all at the same time Going away isn’t really sad especially when your going enables a new kind of presence to be born.
God knows, people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp-following eunuchs of literature.
When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after the first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cold and you warm as you write.
At night, never go to bed without knowing what you’ll write tomorrow.
Experiencing differences is crucial to the human condition. Especially when that difference is over the head, blower powder.
Writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for wordlessness.
French is the language of diplomacy. Spanish is the language of bureaucracy.