Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.
Don’t do what you can do – try what you can’t do.
There is that might-have-been which is the single rock we cling to above the maelstrom of unbearable reality.
Had Passion and Purity never encountered, Tenderness had never come into the world.
Necessity has a way of obliterating from our conduct various delicate scruples regarding honor and pride.
My ideal job? Landlord of a bordello! The company’s good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.
The poets are almost always wrong about the facts. That’s because they’re not interested in the facts, only the truth.
Try to be better than yourself.
It feels almost soft, like something to be caressed. Only gold feels that way.
It’s the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet, because you never can quite do it as well as you want to, so there’s always something to wake up tomorrow morning to do.
An artist is completely amoral in that he will rob, beg, borrow, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.
Don Quixote – I read that every year, as some do the Bible.
I decline to accept the end of man.
Riches is nothing in the face of the Lord, for He can see into the heart.
The writer in America isn’t part of the culture of this country. He’s like a fine dog. People like him around, but he’s of no use.
A fellow gets to thinking. About all the sorrow and afflictions in this world; how it’s liable to strike anywhere, like lightning.
Listen to the voices.
I do not rewrite unless I am absolutely sure that I can express the material better if I do rewrite it.
That which is destroying the Church is not the outward groping of those within it nor the inward groping of those without, but the professionals who control it and who have removed the bells from its steeples.
Don’t bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself.