Quote collection
697 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat."
"I have taken as much as six years to prepare a book for writing. There is such a delirium of effort in the production of a book; it's like childbirth. And, like childbirth, one forgets the pains immediately so that when you come to write another one you dare to take it up again. Some precious anesthesia sees you through."
"We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — "Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.""
"A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us."
"Look at them. There are your true philosophers. I think that Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen. I think they survive in this particular world better than other people. In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed. All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs, and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and curiously clean. They can do what they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them something else."
"I'm back with my own kind of people here now, the bums and drinkers and no goods and it is a fine thing."
"A man on a horse is spiritually, as well as physically, bigger then a man on foot."
"Father and son are natural enemies and each is happier and more secure in keeping it that way."
"I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession."
"Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on."
"One day we'll sit and you'll lay it out on the table, neat like a solitaire deck, but now - why, you can't find all the cards."
"What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately."
"One can find so many pains when the rain is falling."
"Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish."
"I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances."
"Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it."
"There are some times...when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow."
"It is the hour of pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself."
"I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind."
"No one wants advice - only corroboration."