“The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.”

Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations.

Pouring out liquor is like burning books.

The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.

How false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.

You could do so much for me if you just would. If you just knew. I am I and you are you and I know it and you don’t know it and you could do so much for me if you just would and if you just would then I could tell you and then nobody would have to know it except you and me.

Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.

Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.

Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.

Only when the clock stops does time come to life

As long as I live under the capitalistic system I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people.

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent.

There are some things for which three words are three too many, and three thousand words that many words too less.

Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.

How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?

Before this country came on the scene, for thousands of years people did things the same way. Within 200 years of the advent of this nation, men were walking on the moon, and I want us to recognize this is the kind of people that we are. We’re creative with a lot of ingenuity and a lot of energy.

This was it. Together. Forever. As we left it all behind, the sun warmed my back, lighting the way before us. I knew of no better omen.

An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.

The infant breaks his toy, bites his nurse’s breast, strangles his canary long before he is able to reason; cruelty is stamped in animals, in whom, as I think I have said, Nature’s laws are more emphatically to be read than in ourselves; cruelty exists amongst savages.

A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.

The reason I play so hard is that somewhere out there is some kid who has never seen me play before, and I don’t want to disappoint him.

It’s a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you’ve been to all the places you don’t need to be.