“What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.”

We are all of us born, live and die in the shadow of a giant question mark that refers to three questions: Where do we come from? Why? And where, oh where, are we going!

I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person.

He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.

Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.

When you’re going through a period of unhappiness, a broken love affair, the death of someone you love, or some other disorder in your life, then you have no refuge but writing.

I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

That time is short and it doesn’t return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, and the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition.

And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.

The only unforgivable sin is deliberate cruelty.

You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it.

Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch of a hand on a hand, or a mouth on a mouth.

Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other.

Not facing a fire doesn’t put it out.

It is planned speeches that contain lies or dissimulations, not what you blurt out so spontaneously in one instant.

I hung my fingertips on his waistband, tugging him closer. Patch buried his face in the curve of my shoulder, his hands flexing over my back. He gave a low groan. “i love you,” he murmured into my hair. “i’m happier right now than i ever remember being.

I don’t have the body for this,” i quipped, lifting my chin to a voluptous woman nearby who shook her hips zealously to the beat. “no curves.” jev’s eyes held mine. “are you asking my opinion?

A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.

I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.

I used to think I was hitting a draw at times, and the ball was still curving to the right! I still prefer to play a little fade, but I’ve had to recalibrate my visuals.

Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.

I had plenty of power, and I knew how to play the curve, but I was a tour player who was watching his tee shots peel 30, 40 yards to the right.

The breaking wave and the muscle as it contracts obey the same law. Delicate line gathers the body’s total strength in a bold balance. Shall my soul meet so severe a curve, journeying on its way to form?