Life is a goddam mess...but you wouldn't want to miss it!

...you can hate a place with all your heart and soul and still be homesick for it.

I never felt at home. I stuck outIn New York City, especially in Greenwich Village, down among the cranks and the misfits and the one-lungers and the has-beens and the might've beens and the would-bes and the never-wills and the God-knows-whats, I have always felt at home.

I have a great deal of experience in justifying myself to myself.

He had a habit of remarking to bartenders that he didn't see any sense in mixing whiskey with water since the whiskey was already wet.

When I get through tearing a lobster apart, or one of those tender West Coast octopuses, I feel like I had a drink from the fountain of youth.

The best talk is artless, the talk of people trying to reassure or comfort themselves, women in the sun, grouped around baby carriages, talking about their weeks in the hospital or the way meat has gone up, or men in saloons, talking to combat the loneliness everyone feels.