“Away with you, water, destruction of wine!”

Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill bred it is!

Every one has his faults: but we do not see the wallet on our own backs.

What a woman says to an eager lover, write it on running water, write it on air.

It is difficult to lay aside a confirmed passion.

The vows that woman makes to her fond lover are only fit to be written on air or on the swiftly passing stream.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love. Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus

I hate and love. You ask, perhaps, how can that be? I know not, but I feel the agony.

It is difficult to suddenly give up a long love. Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem

Give up wanting to deserve any thanks from anyone, or thinking anybody can be grateful.

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then a thousand more.

Now Spring restores the balmy heat, now Zephyr’s sweet breezes calm the rage of the equinoctial sky.

I hate and I love, and who can tell me why?

So a maiden, whilst she remains untouched, so long is she dear to her own; when she has lost her chaste flower with sullied body, she remains neither lovely to boys nor dear to girls.

For the godly poet must be chaste himself, but there is no need for his verses to be so.

Who now travels that dark path from whose bourne they say no one returns. [Lat., Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum Illue unde negant redire quemquam.]

I write of youth, of love, and have access by these to sing of cleanly wantonness.

It’s not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It’s like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it. Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death’s terror.

I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and ocean in the world, were united to support me in the task to which I have now been dedicated with such solemnity.

There’s nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.

The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating desires-to rush places in fast motors, to kiss girls, to sing, to be witty. … He perceived that he had gifts of profligacy which had been neglected. -chapter 8

A speculator is one who runs risks of which he is aware and an investor is one who runs risks of which he is unaware.

I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God had abandoned me,

You don’t want to hear about how much money I donate to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America or to AIDS awareness or to give out scholarships. You don’t want to hear about that.

The problem as you get older, is that you become more self-aware. At the same time, you have to surprise yourself. There’s no way of arranging the surprise, so it is tricky.