The value of literature lies in these intermittent ‘true impressions.’ A novel moves back and forth between the world of objects, of actions, of appearances, and that other world, from which these ‘true impressions’ come and which moves us to believe that the good we hang on to so tenaciously – in the face of evil, so obstinately – is no illusion.
I think you ought to write, in bed, and make use of your unhappiness. I do it. Many do. One should cook and eat one’s misery. Chain it like a dog. Harness like Niagara Falls to generate light and supply voltage for electric chairs.
The earth is a huge ball which nothing holds up in space except its own motion and magnetism, and we conscious things who occupy it believe we have to move too, in our own space. We can’t allow ourselves to lie down and not to do our share and imitate the greater entity.
But the best-treated, most favored and intelligent part of any society is often the most ungrateful. Ingratitude, however, is its social function.
First these people murdered you, then they forced you to brood over their crimes.
There haven’t been civilizations without cities. But what about cities without civilizations? An inhuman thing, if possible, to have so many people together who beget nothing on one another. No, but it is not possible, and the dreary begets its own fire, and so this never happens.
In any true life you must go and be exposed outside the small circle that encompasses two or three heads in the same history of love.
Everybody I ever knew wanted to show in some way how he held the world together. This only comes from feeling the strain of holding yourself together, and it gets exaggerated into the whole world from the hard labor you put into it.
These were his friends of the business community; a man in business had to have such, and he visited and entertained but neither touched nor was touched, ever.
Under the changes of weather it may look like marble or like sea water, black as slate in the fog, white as tufa in sunlight.
He liked to wear good clothes, but once he had put it on each article appeared to go its own way.
He had made mistakes, but he could overlook these. He had been a fool, but that could be forgiven. The time wasted – must be relinquished.
Whenever I write a dramatic poem I can’t understand why the characters should ever want to be anything but poets themselves.
I guess nothing restrains people from demanding ideal conditions. Very little restrains them from anything.
When a man’s breast feels like a cage from which all the dark birds have flown – he is free, he is light. And he longs to have his vultures back again. He wants his customary struggles, his nameless, empty works, his anger, his afflictions and his sins.
A man like you, humble for life, who wants to feel and live, has trouble – not wanting,” said Tamkin in his parenthetical fashion, “to exchange an ounce of soul for a pound of social power – he’ll never make it without help in a world like this.
Even if I am not the honestest type in the world I don’t want to lie more than is average.
A person can become tired of looking himself over and trying to fix himself up. You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
You saw how he put his paws over my face so I couldn’t breathe?” she said. “God made him to be a butcher. Why did he become a dentist? His hands are too heavy. The touch is everything to a dentist. If his hands aren’t right he shouldn’t be let practice. But his wife worked hard to send him through school and make a dentist of him. And I must go to him and be burned because of it.
I quit thinking long ago that all old people came to rest from the things they were out for in their younger years.