“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.”

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.

I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.

Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

I say money has no value; it’s just the way you spend it.

People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

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.

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

It’s a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can’t eat for eight hours; he can’t drink for eight hours; he can’t make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.

Success is feminine and like a woman, if you cringe before her, she will override you

No one individual can tell the truth.

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.

She could carry off anything; and some people said that she did.

Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.

One of the absolute rules I learned in the war was, don’t know anything you don’t need to know, because if you ever get caught they will get it out of you.

What use is revelation or religion if it doesnt change anything?

I don’t have to explain anything to anybody.

And I decided then and there that that was it. I never wanted to do anything else. It was better than it had been with any man, you know. Maybe that’s the trouble.

Just anything to get people to think. I mean if you can get a whole room full of drunk, stoned people to actually wake up and think, you’re doing something.

Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final.