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.
Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary...
Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.
By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.
Easy writing makes hard reading.
If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.
You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.
You know you’re writing well when you’re throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.
Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?