The greatest profound pain is cased by, and is the result of our own illusions, fantasies and dreams.
The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader’s mind as differing from, say, the purpose of oratory or philosophy which respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.
Baseball is a game played by idiots for morons.
An unread book is just a block of paper.
But I always felt that I’d rather be provincial hot-tamale than soup without seasoning.
Never walk near the bed; to a ghost your ankle is your most vulnerable part-once in bed, you’re safe; he may lie around under the bed all night, but you’re safe as daylight. If you still have doubts pull the blanket over your head.
A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.
Her voice sounded like money.
I was in love with a whirlwind, so when the girl threw me over, I went home and finished my novel.
I care not who hoes the lettuce of my country if I can eat the salad!
When a man is tired of life on his 21st birthday it indicates that he is rather tired of something in himself.
Reporting the extreme things as if they were the average things will start you on the art of fiction.
From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building.
One girl can be pretty – but a dozen are only a chorus.
Shakespeare – whetting, frustrating, surprising and gratifying.
All things come to him who mates.
Prose talent depends on having something to say and an interesting, highly developed way of saying it.
I began to realize that for two years my life had been a drawing on resources that I did not possess, that I had been mortgaging myself physically and spiritually up to the hilt.
So they were desperately in love and being desperately in love involves a desperate existence.
A writer’s temperament is continually making him do things he can never repair.