“I love to write and I assure you I write regularly. But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.”

Where do the ducks go in the winter?

I was sixteen then, and I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen. Sometimes, I act a lot older than I am–I really do. But people never notice it. People never notice anything.

You think of the book you’d most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.

I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.

I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.

I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

You don’t know how to talk to people you don’t like. Don’t love, really. You can’t live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes.

You can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.

I could happily lie down and die sometimes.

Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion.

And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I’d probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

People are always ruining things for you.

People are mostly hot to have a discussion when you’re not.

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.

There are nice things in the world – and I mean nice things. We’re all such morons to get so sidetracked.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.

You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.

I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that.

Obscurity and a competence – that is the life that is best worth living.

I’d rather be happy being myself than sad trying to please everyone else.

If I am only happy for myself, many fewer chances for happiness. If I am happy when good things happen to other people, billions more chances to be happy!

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

The sad soul once had happy stories to tell.