“A fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change.”

Believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.

You can’t beat women anyhow and that if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don’t even try to.

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

And sure enough, even waiting will end…if you can just wait long enough.

All l mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings, only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don’t know why either except that the strings are all in one another’s way.

Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

It’s all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow.

To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.

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.

I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit.

I tend to kind of try to use what’s in my environment to the best of my ability rather than seek out things that I don’t already have.

Political correctness has a stranglehold on academia, on feminism, and on the media. It is a form of both madness and maggotry, and has already silenced the voices of writers like James Dicky across the land.

Rich people constantly learn and grow. Poor people think they already know.

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.

If we just had more revelation of what we already have, there would be far less prayers and far more praise.

Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who…have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies.

I was raised in California, so this whole New York winter thing is completely new for me. I’ve already justified buying seven coats!