Hell man, I know very well you didn't come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except that you've got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict.

...the tale that's told for no other reason but companionship, which is another (and my favorite) definition of literature, the tale that's told for companionship and to teach something religious, of religious reverence, about real life, in this real world which literature should (and here does) reflect.

I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why.

all day long wearing a hat that wasn't on my head

And with joy you realize for the first time "Thinking's just like not thinking — So I don't have to think any more".

We lay on our backs looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when he made life so sad and disinclined.

You can't live in this world but there's nowhere else to go.