“For people never say anything the same way twice; no two of them ever say it the same. The greatest imaginative writer that ever brooded in a lavender robe and a mellowed briar in his teeth, couldn...”

“... Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you.”

“Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”

“A book, a true book, is the writer's confessional. For, whether he would have it so or not, he is betrayed, directly or indirectly, by his characters, into presenting publicly his innermost feelings.”

“She was neither widow nor mother: she only yearned for the dignity of a woman who had once belonged, somewhere, to somebody. She had belonged to no one, for she had never wanted chick nor child. He...”

“Never sleep with someone whose troubles are worse than your own.”

“As regards intellectual work it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual, working ...”

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, andin spite of True Romance magazineswe shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do no...”

“I never really understood the word loneliness. As far as I was concerned, I was in an orgy with the sky and the ocean, and with nature.”

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.”

“As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just...”

“Loneliness clarifies. Here silence standsLike heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral...”

“Running, you should know, is a kind of stillness.”