I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way.

Dying is a very simple thing. I've looked at death and really I know. If I should have died it would have been very easy for me. Quite the easiest thing I ever did. But the people at home do not realize that. They suffer a thousand times more.

In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.

I've been wondering about Dostoyevsky. How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?

I always like it at a war. There is always the chance that you will get up the next morning and be killed and not have to write.

No horse named Morbid ever won a race.

[Never give up hope. Never give in to pessimism. Never despair.] No horse named Morbid ever won a race!