He did not say that because he knew that if you said a good thing it might not happen.

If a writer stops observing, he is finished.

He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.

But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope).

Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.

He had loved too much, demanded too much, and he wore it all out.

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.