That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any.

It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.

Against my better judgment I feel certain that somewhere very near here—the first house down the road, maybe—there's a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here somebody's having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight.

You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

Oh, I don’t know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don’t know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It’s more interesting and all.

There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

He was one of those guys that think they're being a pansy if they don't break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you. God I hate that stuff.