“A fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change.”

I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail…because he has a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

Whatever its symbol – cross or crescent or whatever – that symbol is man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race.

Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death.

The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.

The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends.

No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.

If we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don’t deserve to survive, and probably won’t.

Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

The writer’s only responsibility is to his art.

Our most treasured family heirloom are our sweet family memories.

One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat…nor make love for eight hours…

They are gifted with the powers of being mothers, but not nursing mothers. Nature gives them bosoms for show, but not for use. So Lady Arabella had a wet-nurse.

Vee lowered her lashes and smiled wickedly. “this class isn’t going to teach me anything i don’t already know.” “vee? As in virgin?” “not so loud.” she winked just as the bell rang, sending us both to our seats, which were side by side at our shared table.

Dont panic, i thought. But already my breathing was faster, shallower. You mean you can feel happy or sad or desire. A barely-there smile.

I’ve worked countless hours in the gym, so I feel like I’m already prepared for the game.

The author of Biographia Literaria was already a ruined man. Sometimes, however, to be a “ruined man” is itself a vocation.

She had already allowed her delectable lover to pluck that flower which, so different from the rose to which it is nevertheless sometimes compared, has not the same faculty of being reborn each spring.

And in today already walks tomorrow.

For me, a writer is already being the deuce of his mission, his occupation to society.