Quote collection
383 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol - cross or crescent or whatever - that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race."
"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
"Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him."
"Our most treasured family heirloom are our sweet family memories. The past is never dead, it is not even past."
"The best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it's the perfect milieu for an artist to work in."
"You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith."
"The writer's only responsibility is to his art...If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies."
"You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults."
"The ideal woman which is in every man's mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree."
"Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets."
"A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences."
"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."
"Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life."
"You like orchids?... Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption."
"Civilization begins with distillation"
"Mississippi begins in a lobby of a Memphis, Tennessee hotel and extends south to the Gulf of Mexico"
"Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid."
"Pouring out liquor is like burning books."
"Truth; that long clean clear simple undeniable unchallengeable straight and shining line, on one side of which black is black and on the other white is white, has now become an angle, a point of view."
"For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863..."