You ought to be ironical the minute you get out of bed. You ought to wake up with your mouth full of pity.

I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.

I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing what you really felt, rather that what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things which produced the emotion that you experienced.

And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it.

It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.

where a man feels at home, outside of where he’s born, is where he’s meant to go.

What I learned constructive about women, not just ethics like never blame them if they pox you because somebody poxed them and lots of times they don't even know they have it — that's in the first reader for squares — is, no matter how they get, always think of them the way they were on the best day they ever had.