Most of the men regarded Europe as a wine list. In their mental geography Rheims, Rhine, Moselle, Bordeaux, Champagne, or Würzburg were not localities but libations.

There are only two kinds of people in the world that really count. One kind's wheat and the other kind's emeralds.

celebratin' New Year's Eve is like eatin' oranges. You got to let go your dignity t' really enjoy 'em.

The writer is a writer because he cannot help it. It is a compulsion.

Any piece of furniture, I don't care how beautiful it is, has got to be lived with, and kicked about, and rubbed down, and mistreated by servants, and repolished, and knocked around and dusted and sat on or slept in or eaten off of before it develops its real character ... A good deal like human beings.

Funny, isn't it, how your whole life goes by while you think you're only planning the way you're going to live it?

Take Texas the way Texas takes bourbon. Straight. It goes down easier.