Every man in a bank hates what the bank does and yet the bank does it.

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.

I have thought that men and women should never come together except in bed. There is the only place where their natural hatred of each other is not so apparent.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter, "Beware. You will never get out of this world alive."

Look at them. There are your true philosophers. I think that Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen. I think they survive in this particular world better than other people. In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed. All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs, and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and curiously clean. They can do what they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them something else.

Intention, good or bad, is not enough.