“I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man’s pleasure when they come a cropper.”

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.

The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.

I can only do what’s easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can’t, and won’t, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who’s strong enough to boss me or whom I’m strong enough to boss.

Money pads the edges of things.

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

We move between two darknesses.

Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don’t believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art’s sake.

I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I’d like to be.

So I shan’t ever marry, for there aren’t such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.

There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.

Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

I won’t be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.

Whenever you get around to doing what you want to do, it will be now. The things you need to do to live a happier, more fulfilling life-the only time you can possible start doing them is now.

Money will hit me at a big off-period and genius will hit me in starvation, that is, I often get the money when I don’t think I deserve it and have been lolling around for days and days thinking the most abysmal thoughts.

I was known around the college for jamming in the lounge.

I became the storyteller of South Side Chicago. I used an old Kiwi liquid shoe polish as a microphone. I’d go around the house interviewing everybody, telling stupid jokes, doing voices. I mimicked Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr., people on ‘Laugh-In,’ Flip Wilson.

After I ran off the mound, I looked over at the St. Louis dugout. There were players rolling around on the floor, laughing. Poor Terry. I’ll have to admit that was a hell of a curveball.

I don’t seek power and do not run around

Public and private funds have been thrown around like confetti at a country fair, to close up and destroy clinics, hospitals, and scientific research laboratories which do not conform to the viewpoint of medical associations.

It always felt embattled and small. It always, almost always, was a small group of people relative to the opposition around.