Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.

I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much. In fact I have lived not too long but too much. One day the Iron Crab will get me. Then I shall have died of living too much.

Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.

I am a poet in deeds--not often in words.

One of the bibles of my youth was 'Birds of the West Indies,' by James Bond, a well-known ornithologist, and when I was casting about for a name for my protagonist I thought, 'My God, that's the dullest name I've ever heard,' so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the world has become an exciting one.

It reads better than it lives

The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.