Thank God you can flee, can escape from that massy five-foot-thick maggot-cheesy solidarity which overlays the earth, in which men and women in couples are ranked like ninepins.
It’s always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret.
It seems impossible for a man to learn the value of money without first having to learn to waste it.
In my opinion it’s a shame that there is so much work in the world.
I don’t want money badly enough to work for it.
A writer is trying to create believable people in credible moving situations in the most moving way he can.
I never promise a woman anything nor let her know what I’m going to give her. That’s the only way to manage them. Always keep them guessing. If you cant think of any other way to surprise them, give them a bust in the jaw.
A hack writer who would have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tried out a few of the old proven ‘sure-fire’ literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.
The artist is still a little like the old court jester. He’s supposed to speak his vicious paradoxes with some sense in them, but he isn’t part of whatever the fabric is that makes a nation.
The writer doesn’t need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper.
Only when the clock stops does time come to life.
In Europe, being an artist is a form of behavior. In America, it’s an excuse for a form of behavior.
What a writer’s obituary should read – he wrote the books, then he died.
The necessity of the idea creates its own style. The material itself dictates how it should be written.
That’s a very good way to learn the craft of writing – from reading.
No one individual can tell the truth.
A writer strives to express a universal truth in the way that rings the most bells in the shortest amount of time.
Curiosity is a mistress whose slaves decline no sacrifice.
Writing a first draft is like trying to build a house in a strong wind.
Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.