No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.

Politics isn't in my nature.

Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go.

Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered-sometimes it seemed to take forever-went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.

A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.

... it's possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.

Prufrock had measured out his life with measuring spoons; Dubin, in books resurrecting the lives of others.