The jagged mountains were pure blue in the dawn and everywhere birds twittered and the sun when it rose caught the moon in the west so that they lay opposed to each other across the earth, the sun whitehot and the moon a pale replica, as if they were the ends of a common bore beyond whose terminals burned worlds past all reckoning.

He poured the tumbler full. Drink up, he said. The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.

I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else.

My daddy used to tell me not to chew on somethin that was eatin you.

When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say: where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that?

It would take a hell of a wife to beat no wife at all.

My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.