Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
... but she was also bewilderingly lonely... Abra had lost her gift for being alone.
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.
With knowledge there is no hope,... without hope I would sit motionless, rusting like unused armor.
Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides...
She used religion as a therapy for the ills of the world and herself, and she changed the religion to fit the ill. When she found that the theosophy she had developed for communication with a dead hus...
Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.
People like you to be something, preferably what they are.
New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it - on...
Liza had a finely developed sense of sin Idleness was a sin, and card playing, which was a kind of idleness to her. She was suspicious of fun whether it involved dancing or singing or even laughter. S...
I’m gettin’ tired way past where sleep rests me.
It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods.
It has always seemed strange to me, said Doc. The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And thos...
Is it responsibility or blame that bothers you? I don't want blame.Sometimes responsibility is worse. It doesn't carry any pleasant egotism.I was thinking about that time when Sam Hamilton and you and...
In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.
If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.
I think perhaps Liza accepted the world as she accepted the Bible, with all of its paradoxes and its reverses. She did not like death but she knew it existed, and when it came it did not surprise her....
I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kind...
He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.