places to hunt places to hide are getting harder to find, and pet canaries and goldfish too, did you notice that?

Daddy,' my mother asked, 'aren’t we going to run out of gas?' No there’s plenty of god-damned gas.' Where are we going?' I’m going to get some god-damed oranges!

Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.

There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything.

nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. it’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it.

That's what friendship means: sharing the prejudice of experience.

The night kept coming on in and there was nothing I could do.