The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

My working habits are simple: long periods of thinking, short periods of writing.

No; that doesn't interest me.' 'That's because you never read a book about it.

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?

When you stop doing things for fun you might as well be dead.

Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.