News is like the tilefish which appears in great schools off the Atlantic Coast some years and then vanishes, no one knows whither or for how long. Newspapers might employ these periods searching for the breeding grounds of news, but they prefer to fill up with stories about Kurdled Kurds or Calvin Coolidge, until the banks close or a Hitler marches, when they are as surprised as their readers.

It is impossible for me to estimate how many of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism were concepts that, left to my own devices, I would have encountered much later in life.

If a boxer ever went as crazy as Nijinsky all the wowsers in the world would be screaming 'punch-drunk.' Well, who hit Nijinsky? And why isn't there a campaign against ballet? It gives girls thick legs

I had an attack of the gout two days before pulling out, and I went limping off to the war instead of coming limping back from it.

Henry Miller may write about revelers self-woven into a human hooked rug, because his ecstasy is solemn.

I used to be shy about ordering a steak after I had eaten a steak sandwich, but I got used to it.

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.