“The writer’s only responsibility is to his art.”

Success is feminine and like a woman, if you cringe before her, she will override you

No one individual can tell the truth.

Believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.

You can’t beat women anyhow and that if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don’t even try to.

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

And sure enough, even waiting will end…if you can just wait long enough.

All l mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings, only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don’t know why either except that the strings are all in one another’s way.

Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

It’s all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow.

To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.

Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations.

Pouring out liquor is like burning books.

The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.

My grandmother flew only once in her life, and that was the day she and her new husband ascended into the skies of Victorian London in the wicker basket of a hot-air balloon.

But I’m the only one who can paint the moon, because I’m the only one who knows whether that’s right or not.

Future’s the only flower worth tending in this earth, where I sow my words daily: and you know, these good trees bear fruit round the year.

If the only obstacle to the renewal and modernization of France is a choice of personne.

Those who have nothing have only their discipline.

The only thing in this world that gives orders is balls.

So in fact the only thing you can judge in this sport its the longterm. You can judge a career or a season, but not one race.

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.