You let everything stand until it's knocked over and then you go over and write your own ruins
Yeah, fighting a war to fix something works about as good as going to a whorehouse to get rid of a clap.
We find, therefore, Lowell and Mailer ostensibly locked in converse. In fact, out of the thousand separate enclaves of their very separate personalities, they sensed quickly that they now shared one e...
There was the old myth of divine intervention. You blasphemed, and a lightning bolt struck you. That was a little steep too. If punishment is at all proportionate to the offense, then power becomes wa...
There remained a hole drilled through his heart.
The best they could? I don’t think so. He paused as if to edit his woes and select the most telling ones. Did you notice how they treated the officers? They slept in staterooms when we were jammed in...
She was one old lady who had the real heat of suspicion—it irritated her when the silver count was correct (as it always was) because paranoia that cannot be confirmed is more difficult to bear than a...
Metaphor reveals a writer’s true grasp of life. To the degree that you have no metaphor, you have not yet lived much of a life.
Maybe all illness results from a failure of communication between mind and body. It is certainly true of such quick disease as a knockout.
Listenmy lovethe houris latemy sidehas anacheIfyou don'tget ataximy heartwill break
Just as a fighter has to feel that he possesses the right to do physical damage to another man, so a writer has to be ready to take chances with his readers’ lives.
It takes all kinds to make a world.
I will now make an apology, although I will do my best not to repeat it. (Good readers do not read fiction, after all, to put up with the author’s regrets.) I will say that having read the best and wo...
I live by the law of averages, said Alois. I prefer to think of the ongoing possibility of profit rather than of the intermittent perils that surround all activity.
I am not here only so that the blind might see, but to teach those who thought they could see that they are blind
I HATE EVERYTHING WHICH IS NOT IN MYSELF
Historical, religious, and existential treatises suggest that for some persons at some times, it is rational not to avoid physical death at all costs. Indeed the spark of humanity can maximize its ess...
Hearn’s death was happily smudged, or at least on the surface, but ever since the second ambush he had been feeling the apprehension of a man in a dream who knows he is guilty, is waiting for his puni...
He was full of love—for himself, first, and his prowess—such a fine power at his age. Then, he felt a degree of love for her—
Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart