If you had better sense you’d have learned by now that nothing thrives so well as wickedness

Everything matters, but nothing matters very much.

... maybe that's all anyone who writes or paints or sculpts is doing anyway -- excusing themselves for refusing to live like other people or be like them.

I've got a penny-ante talent, out of which I try to drum up a living for myself. And what nobody seems to realize is that it's just as difficult to get a bad idea as a good one.

there are only two ways to make a lot [of money] while you're young: One is to entertain the public; and the other is to cheat it.

[Sex] is something big and cosmic. What else do we have? There's only birth and death and the union of two people - and sex is the only one that happens to us more than once.

I think Americans love success - but hate the people who have it.