The nightmare of living was begun.
That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.
Para el norteamericano común, lo que es raro no es bueno.
One day you discover you are alive.Explosion! Concussion! Illumination! Delight!You laugh, you dance around, you shout.But, not long after, the sun goes out. Snow falls, but no one sees it, on an Augu...
La dignité de la vérité se perd dans l'excès de ses protestations
I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashi...
I want to hold onto this funny thing. God, it's gotten big on me. I don't know what it is. I'm so damned unhappy, I'm so mad, and I don't know why. I feel like I'm putting on weight. I feel fat. I fee...
I am Plato's Republic. Mr. Simmons is Marcus. I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Sc...
How many times can a man go down and still be alive?
His flesh took paleness from his bones.
He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.
He realized that all men were like this; that each person was to himself one alone. One oneness, a unit in a society, but always afraid. Like here, standing. If he should scream, if he should holler f...
He had felt that a moment before his making the turn, someone had been there. The air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, quietly, and only a moment before he came, simp...
Good writers touch life often.
From the outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living.
For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it & sometimes break in two. I've known a few. You work twice as hard to be a farmer as to be his hog.
Evil has only the power that we give it. I give you nothing. I take back. Starve. Starve. Starve.
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand tou...
Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.
Can't you recognize the human in the inhuman?