Writing is like going to bed with a beautiful woman and afterwards she gets up, goes to her purse and gives me a handful of money.

Some nights I knew that if I slept I would die.

Most people are not ready for death, theirs or anybody elses.

I only want sweet peace and kindliness when I awaken -- but there's always some finger pointing, telling me some terrible deed I committed during the night. It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any.

and the color in my eyes has gone back into the sea.

In a more universal sense, we only get one thing. You know...a head stone if we're lucky; if not, green grass.

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.