The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while, even if they're only scratching their arms or blowing their noses or even just giggling or something.

Each of his phrases was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey.

The connection was so bad, and I couldn’t talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back ‘What?

You can't argue with someone who believes, or just passionately suspects, that the poet's function is not to write what he must write but, rather, to write what he would write if his life depended on his taking responsibility for writing what he must in a style designed to shut out as few of his old librarians as humanly possible.

Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines. Give me an honest con man any day.

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