All a man has is pride. Sometimes you have it so much it is a sin. We have all done things for pride that we knew were impossible. We didn't care. But a man must implement his pride with intelligence and care.

You write a book like that you're fond of over the years, then you see that happen to it, it's like pissing in your father's beer.

There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.

I don’t. I don’t want anybody else to touch you. I’m silly. I get furious if they touch you.

It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write.

A girl came in the cafe and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair black as a crow's wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek.

Anyone who says he wants to be a writer and isn't writing, doesn't.