“A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.”

I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail…because he has a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

Whatever its symbol – cross or crescent or whatever – that symbol is man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race.

Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death.

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…

For a guy who used to steal watches on the streets of Chandni Chowk for kicks,

I never could have dreamed that her heart was so wicked, but I keep coming back because it’s so hard to kick it.

I get a kick out of making a strangers day.

Just get to know me. Be my friend. Just kick it with me as if I was hanging with a homeboy.

That willpower has to kick in.

Did you see The Never-Ending Story? That’s one kick-ass dragon. It’s basically a giant puppy dragon.

I worry that I can come off smarmy. I wonder if I was listening to myself if I’d want to kick my own ass.

I want to have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.