“Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.”

I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.

A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everyone.

What one does in one’s art, that is the breath of one’s being. What one does in one’s life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about.

When I hear modern people complain of being lonely then I know what has happened. They have lost the cosmos.

You can’t insure against the future, except by really believing in the best bit of you, and in the power beyond it.

She would have thought a woman would have died of shame. Instead of which, the shame died.

I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.

This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us.

A woman unsatisfied must have luxuries. But a woman who loves a man would sleep on a board

But humanity never gets beyond the caterpillar stage -it rots in the chrysalis, it never will have wings.It is anti-creation, like monkeys and baboons.

Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

Only youth has a taste of immortality.

But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.

Instead of chopping yourself down to fit the world, chop the world down to fit yourself.