“I believe that the silence of God, the absolute speechlessness of Him is a long, long, and awful thing that the whole world is lost because of.”

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.

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!

I don’t want realism. I want magic!

Some things are not forgiveable.

Time goes by so fast. Nothin’ can outrun it. Death commences too early–almost before you’re half-acquainted with life–you meet the other.

I had some money, I made the best paintings ever.

I was completely reclusive, worked a lot, took a lot of drugs. I was awful to people.

You make me happy, even when you’re awful. I would rather be with you – even the you that you seem to think is diminished – than with anyone else in the world.

Everything in life has some good in it. And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more–it’s sad, but that’s the truth.

Honestly, I haven’t the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.

I had an awful first quarter but I picked it up. To all you single guys out there, it’s not how you start the date, it’s how you finish it sir.

It’s a merger of home life and work life. They aren’t that separate, I must confess, and my daughters know an awful lot about childcare reform now because of it.

The secret of spiritual success is a hunger that persists…It is an awful condition to be satisfied with one’s spiritual attainments…