“What liars poets and everybody were! They made one think one wanted sentiment. When what one supremely wanted was this piercing, consuming, rather awful sensuality.”

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.

Perhaps only those people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the world.

Give up bearing children and bear hope and love and devotion to those already born.

We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.

He felt he had lost it for good, he knew what it was to have been in communication with her, and to be cast off again. In misery, his heart like a heavy stone, he went about unliving.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself

If I were the moon, I know where I would fall down.

Love is never a fulfillment. Life is never a thing of continuous bliss. There is no paradise. Fight and laugh and feel bitter and feel bliss: and fight again. Fight, fight. That is life.

Vitally, the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree, with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.

It’s not art for art’s sake, it’s art for my sake.

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.

It lies not in our power to love or hate, for will in us is overruled by fate.

Painters and poets have liberty to lie.

You told me you went to hell and back for my sake, when I see your face no signs or trace or effort “for my sake”; here you go again with your lies, go back to hell where you’re welcome to stay.

There are gems of wondrous brightness Often times lying at our feet, And we pass them, walking thoughtless, Down the busy, crowded street. If we knew, our pace would slacken, We would step more oft with care, Lest our careless feet be treading To the earth some jewel rare.

A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!

The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women – black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.