The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.
It is no use. I find it impossible to work with security staring me in the face.
It is all right you’re saying you do not need other people, but there are a lot of people who need you.
I have seldom written a story, long or short, that I did not have to write and rewrite. There are single stories of mine that have taken me ten or twelve years to get written.
All good New Orleanians go to look at the Mississippi at least once a day. At night it is like creeping into a dark bedroom to look at a sleeping child – something of that sort – gives you the same warm nice feeling, I mean.
Above all avoid taking the advice of men who have no brains and do not know what they are talking about.
I think that those of us who are what are called intellectuals make a terrible mistake in overvaluing the yen we have for the arts, books, etc. There is a sweet, fine quality in life that has nothing to do with this, and more and more I find myself valuing myself with those people.
What’s wrong with this egotism? If a man doesn’t delight in himself and the force in him and feel that he and it are wonders, how is all life to become important to him?
If people did not want their stories told, it would be better for them to keep away from me.
Wait and wait. Most people’s lives are spent waiting.
The machines men are so intent on making have carried them very far from the old sweet things.
There is this thing called life. We live it, not as we intend or wish, but as we are driven on by forces outside and inside ourselves.
The writing of words can lead to all sorts of absurdities.
If I can write everything out plainly, perhaps I will myself understand better what has happened.
I feel that I am writing out of a full life. I am a rich man, rich in men known, in adventures had. I am rich with living.
Friends you have, people you love, die and are born again.
It might be that women who have beennurses should not marry physicians. They have too much respect for physicians, are taughtto have too much respect.
Realism in so far as it means Reality to life is always bad art.
Most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.
There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood.
Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.