In the streets of New York between seven and nine in the morning you will see the slow procession of dog and downer proceeding from street to tree to hydrant to trash basket. They are apartment dogs. They are taken out twice a day, and, while it is a cliché, it is truly amazing how owner and dog resemble each other. They grow to walk alike and have the same set of head.

The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.

How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream - be set down alive?

My wife, my Mary, goes to her sleep the way you would close the door of a closet. So many times I have watched her with envy. Her lovely body squirms a moment as though she fitted herself into a cocoon. She sighs once and at the end of it her eyes close and her lips, untroubled, fall into that wise and remote smile of the Ancient Greek gods. She smiles all night in her sleep, her breath purrs in her throat, not a snore, a kitten's purr... She loves to sleep and sleep welcomes her.

Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all else, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.

A good writer always works at the impossible.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.