“I never blame failure – there are too many complicated situations in life – but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort.”

For what it’s worth, it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be.

I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

Life is so damned hard, so damned hard… It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever any more. That’s the last and worst thing it does.

They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.

You are the loveliest thing that I have ever known.

The ability to hold two competing thoughts in one’s mind and still be able to function is the mark of a superior mind

Long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

Actually that’s my secret — I can’t even talk about you to anybody because I don’t want any more people to know how wonderful you are.

For what it’s worth, it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over.

The reason one writes isn’t the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

You really ought to read more books – you know, those things that look like blocks but come apart on one side.

Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.

Celibacy goes deeper than the flesh.