He and the girl had almost nothing to say to each other. One thing he did say was, 'I ain't got any tattoo on my back.' 'What you got on it?' the girl said. 'My shirt,' Parker said. 'Haw.' 'Haw, haw,' the girl said politely.

Go warn the children of God of the terrible speed of mercy.

Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.

The idea of being a writer attracts a good many shiftless people, those who are merely burdened with poetic feelings or afflicted with sensibility.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.

It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object they actually see.