(Suicide) takes some doing, with maybe pain and maybe hell.

With a few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.

The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads.

And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.

You are not a man anymore. You are a soldier. Your comfort is of no importance and your life isn't of much importance. Most of your orders will be unpleasant, but that's not your business. They should've trained you for this, and not for flower-strewn streets. They should have built your soul with truth, not led along with lies.

In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.