“I only write when I feel the inspiration. Fortunately, inspiration strikes at 10:00 o’clock every day.”

A man. All men. He will pass up a hundred chances to do good for one chance to meddle where meddling is not wanted. He will overlook and fail to see chances, opportunities, for riches and fame and welldoing, and even sometimes for evil. But he won’t fail to see a chance to meddle.

There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn’t fool with booze until he’s fifty; then he’s a damn fool if he doesn’t.

It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.

If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.

So, never be afraid. Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed.

The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.

The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.

If there is a God what the hell is He for?

Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame.

He must train himself in ruthless intolerance-that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph.

Don’t be ‘a writer’. Be writing.

And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.

She was the captain of her soul

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.

The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

We are all the fools of time and terror: Days Steal on us and steal from us; yet we live, Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.

I couldn’t stand here, hanging on, when the very thing i held disappeared more with each passing day.

When people talk about the good old days, I say to people, ‘It’s not the days that are old, it’s you that’s old.’ I hate the good old days. What is important is that today is good.

When you have arrived at your country house and have saluted your household, you should make the rounds of the farm the same day, if possible; if not, then certainly the next day.

Try to write at least 500 words a day. You may ditch 499 of them tomorrow, but you will still be moving forward.

If I advance; follow me. If I retreat; kill me. If I die; avenge me! It is better to live one day as a lion than one-hundred years as a sheep!

You renew yourself every day. Sometimes you’re successful, sometimes your not, but it’s the average that counts.

I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.