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

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

The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends.

No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.

If we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don’t deserve to survive, and probably won’t.

Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

The writer’s only responsibility is to his art.

Our most treasured family heirloom are our sweet family memories.

One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat…nor make love for eight hours…

A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune

But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.

History is not was, it is.

I think now that the young man must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right.