I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people.

there is enough treachery , hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day

I like the way Mahler wandered about in his music and still retained his passion. He must have looked like an earthquake walking down the street.

I have loved you woman as surely as I have named you rust and sand and nylon.

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.

The masses are always wrong...Wisdom is doing everything the crowd does not do. All you do is reverse the totality of their learning and you have the heaven they're looking for.

Joan of Arc had style. Jesus had style.