“Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.”

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

Writers who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.

All men are Jews, though few men know it.

You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.

One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime

Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.

We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.

Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.

You could not pity anything if you weren’t a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.

Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.

The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.

You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.

I don’t think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.

The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.

Some men are by nature explorers; my nature is to stay under the same moon and stars, and if the weather is wet, under the same roof. It’s a strange world, why make it stranger?

And I sighed and wept for what could not be–and for all that could have been.

What is she like? I was told – she is a melancholy soul.

In her eyes, the sadness sings-of one who was destined, for better things.

The sad thing is, she said, the moment you start to miss someone, it means they’re already gone.

We do have, I’m sad to say, a fifth column that is living within our own countries that is utterly opposed to our values, we’re going to have to be a lot braver… in standing up for our Judaeo-Christian culture.

Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.

I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.

Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.