Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.

There's a special feeling you get on a veranda that you just can't get anywhere else.

Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.

Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cat's chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own.

A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything’s going to be all right. you’ve made it past Dead Man’s Curve and you’re out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not.

Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with.

It is the same with anything - you have to learn through your own experience, paying your own way. You can't learn it from a book.