As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early 'forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.

A wine shop was open and I went in for some coffee. It smelled of early morning, of swept dust, spoons in coffee-glasses and the wet circles left by wine glasses.

Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long.

Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved.

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer? Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

Men cannot act before the camera in the presence of death.

Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.