“Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat.”

[On the ringing of her doorbell or telephone:] What fresh hell is this?

It’s not the tragedies that kill us; it’s the messes.

Bewildered is the fox who lives to find that grapes beyond reach can be really sour.

You do what you can, and you do it because you should. But all you can do is all you can do.

Vice is nice, but liquor is quicker.

The writer’s way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?

I hate almost all rich people, but I think I’d be darling at it.

You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.

I’d like to have money. And I’d like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that’s too adorable, I’d rather have money.

Friends come and go but I wouldn’t have thought you’d be one of them.

Don’t feel bad when I die; I’ve been dead for a long time.

I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.

Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.

It was written without fear and without research.

This is me apologizing. I am a fool, a bird-brain, a liar and a horse-thief. I wouldn’t touch a superlative again with an umbrella.

What ever beauty may be it has for its basis order and for its essence unity Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.

I can look at a fine art photograph and sometimes I can hear music.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart.

Where thou art, that is home.

Your body is not your art – it’s your paintbrush. Whether your paintbrush is a tall paintbrush or a thin paintbrush or a stocky paintbrush or a scratched up paintbrush is completely irrelevant.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.