“Writing is just work-there’s no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.”

In fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn’t the initial cost, it’s the humidity.

It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others.

I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever.

Fine, large, meaningless, general terms like romance and business can always be related. They take the place of thinking, and are highly useful to optimists and lecturers.

You’ve been telling us about how to secure peace, but come on, now, General-just among us Rotarians and Rotary Anns-‘fess up!

Emotionally I know she is better than every other country.

I must say I’m not very fond of oratory that’s so full of energy it hasn’t any room for facts.

You have more people that love you than you know.

One quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.

Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country.

As ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.

Life is hard and astonishingly complicated…. No one great reform will make it easy.

You’re so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.

I’ve heard of their curing syphilis by giving the patient malaria, but I’ve never heard of their curing malaria by giving the patient syphilis.

I love America, but I don’t like it.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

I’m at peace with myself. The main thing is not letting people dictate what I do or what I am.

I don’t discuss basketball. I dictate basketball. I’m not interested in philosophy classes.

History will dictate what my legacy is. And ‘maverick’ is fine, because I am.

The public one and the secret one, and you can dictate a sentence prepared by the political and security apparatuses that are behind this trial.

I am not going to be dictated to by fans, certainly. I am dictated enough to by my record company to last me a million years.

The past influences everything and dictates nothing.

The style of Parisian architecture has been proved and refined by at least three centuries of academic dictates and highly developed taste.

We have no right to dictate, through irresponsible action or narrow-mindedness, the future of our children, and our children’s children. There has been enough destruction, enough death, enough waste.