A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.
I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.
He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.
And you treat me wonderfully and keep all your promises.
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.
I try not to borrow, first you borrow then you beg.
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be.
I love you for all that you are, all that you have been, all that you’re yet to be.
I don’t want to be your friend, baby. I am your friend.
If my Valentine you won’t be, I’ll hang myself on your Christmas tree.
That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.
There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
All things truly wicked start from innocence.
Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.
I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.