Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product I turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn’t mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.
It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.
I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.
Like most passionate nations, Texas has its own history based on, but not limited by, facts.
Just set one day’s work in front of the last day’s work. That’s the way it comes out. And that’s the only way it does.
The power of an attitude is amazing.
The candle aimed its spark of light at heaven, like an artist who consumes himself to become divine.
The misery stayed, not thought about but aching away, and sometimes I would have to ask myself, Why do I ache? Men can get used to anything, but it takes time.
There’s nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can’t see or hear or touch a man, it’s best to let him go.
They successfully combined piracy and puritanism, which aren’t so unlike when you come right down to it. Both had a strong dislike for opposition and both had a roving eye for other people’s property.
To a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself.
We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God.
We think of strangers as stronger and better than we are.
When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.
When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he’s gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him.
With a few exceptions people don’t want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.
Father and son are natural enemies and each is happier and more secure in keeping it that way.
I’ve always taken my hangovers as consequence, not as a punishment.
But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and more precious.
There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good.