People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it.

Poets are always taking the weather so personally.

If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined.

She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

It isn't very serious, I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.

And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.

We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound.