“An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why.”

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…

A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune

But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.

History is not was, it is.

I think now that the young man must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right.

I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.

Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

I say money has no value; it’s just the way you spend it.

People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

There have been times in my life that I’ve had a ton of vices, and my demons have run amok for years and years and years.

Demons don’t play by the rules. They lie and they cheat and they stab in the back.

As for getting there … it’s a choice between sinning and being tricked by demons It’s a plane of evil … despair … and magic of the foulest kind.

The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.

There’s a demon in me, and he’s still around. Without the dope, we have a bit more of a chat these days.

The past came to hunt her, but she prepared to fight her demons. She was now a fair believer of herself.

I dance with my demons and live to tell the tale.

I’m just a demon that means well. Freelance for God, but do the work of Satan.