God always punishes us for what we can't imagine.
Everyone needs a hobby, he said. And everyone needs a miracle or two, just to prove life is more than just one long trudge from the cradle to the grave.
Cats were the gangsters of the animal world, living outside the law and often dying there. There were a great many of them who never grew old by the fire.
Art should be a place of hope.
Any parting could be forever, and we don't know.
All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one...
A person who doesn't learn from the past is an idiot, in my estimation.
A person can go along quite awhile if they get a good day every once and again.
A dimwit thinks nothing is funny unless it's mean.
Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.
You think , but you hold out that small hope, see, and that's what fucks you up. That's what kills you.
You said 'God is cruel' the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say 'Snow is cold'. You knew, but you didn't understand. He stepped close to David and put his palms on the boy's co...
When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.
What I'm saying is that I'm trying to find rational reasons to explain irrational feelings, and that's neveer a good sign.
This is how we go on: one day at a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root-canal at a time; boat-builders go on one hull at a time. If you write boo...
There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race. —Iris Murdoch Nuns and Soldiers
The last good time always comes, and when you see the darkness creeping toward you, you hold on to what was bright and good. You hold on for dear life.
The arts are obsessional, and obsession is dangerous. It's like a knife in the mind. In some cases—Dylan Thomas comes to mind, and Ross Lockridge and Hart Crane and Sylvia Plath—the knife can turn sav...
That’s how you know you’re home, I think, no matter how far you’ve gone from it or how long you’ve been in some other place. Home is where they want you to stay longer.
No, it’s not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.