Quote collection
383 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."
"Well, between Scotch and nothin', I suppose I'd take Scotch. It's the nearest thing to good moonshine I can find."
"There are some things for which three words are three too many, and three thousand words that many words too less."
"An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why."
"The salvation of the world is in man's suffering."
"A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune"
"He [the writer] must, teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and compassion and sacrifice. See Poets & Writers"
"A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…."
"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life."
"We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid."
"And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand."
"They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence."
"My ideal job? Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write."
"It is not proof that I sought. I, of all men, know that proof is but a fallacy invented by man to justify to himself and his fellows his own crass lust and folly."
"One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat...nor make love for eight hours..."
"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."
"You get born and you try this and you don't know why, only you keep on trying it and you are born at the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings, only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don't know why either except that the strings are all in one another's way."
"Wonder. Go on and wonder."
"My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky."
"It's all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won't be over until tomorrow."