“Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered-sometimes it seemed to take forever-went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.”

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.

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

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?

Let’s keep our chins up and our knees down – we’re on the victory side.

I never fail to feel let down when I see myself on the screen.

More financial instability will introduce more uncertainty all down the line.

The loop down through there is just really relaxing, not much traffic.

What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?

Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.

The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.

I took an elevator to the top floor of many buildings and walked down floor by floor on the stairs going into every firm and asking the receptionist if she knew of any jobs available.