We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don’t have time to bother with success or getting rich.
Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.
There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn’t fool with booze until he’s fifty; then he’s a damn fool if he doesn’t.
Unless you’re ashamed of yourself now and then, you’re not honest.
Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid.
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune.
You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.
The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends.
Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.
She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.
Pouring out liquor is like burning books.
Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar...
I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.
We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.
The only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost.
A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.
War and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy.
Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.