“Life is a process of preparing to be dead for a long time.”

The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.

The most important thing is insight, that is to be – curious – to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does.

Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.

Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain’t got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.

The ideal woman which is in every man’s mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand.

It seems hard that a man in his need could be so flouted by a road.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.

Truth; that long clean clear simple undeniable unchallengeable straight and shining line, on one side of which black is black and on the other white is white, has now become an angle, a point of view.

The next time you try to seduce anyone, don’t do it with talk, with words.

The quality an artist must have is objectivity in judging his work, plus the honesty and courage not to kid himself about it.

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

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.

Now she hates me. I have taught her that, at least.

I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.