“The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.”

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.

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863…

Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday’s omissions and regrets.

I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire…

Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.

A fool must now and then be right, by chance

Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man’s own making.

We have fools in all sects, and impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one can understand, because written by men who chose to mistake madness for inspiration and style themselves Evangelicals?

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.

Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

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.