I have lived among enough painters and around studios to have had all the theories - and how contradictory they are - rammed down my throat. A man has to have a gizzard like an ostrich to digest all the brass-tacks and wire nails of modern art theories.

But the effort, the effort! And as the marrow is eaten out of a man's bones and the soul out of his belly, contending with the strange rapacity of savage life, the lower stage of creation, he cannot make the effort any more.

Human love, human trust, are always perilous, because they break down. The greater the love, the greater the trust, and the greater the peril, the greater the disaster. Because to place absolute trust on another human being is in itself a disaster, both ways, since each human being is a ship that must sail its own course, even if it go in company with another ship.... And yet, love is the greatest thing between human beings.

Your most vital necessity in this life is that you shall love your wife completely and implicitly and in an entire nakedness of body and spirit.... this that I tell you is my message as far as I've got any.

Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose.

It's hard to ravish a tin of sardines.

I like to write when I feel spiteful; it's like having a good sneeze.