I wonder now what Ernest Hemingways dictionary looked like, since he got along so well with dinky words that anybody can spell and truly understand.

No art is possible without a dance with death.

Nowadays, of course, just about our only solvent industry is the merchandising of death, bankrolled by our grandchildren, so that the message of our principal art forms, movies and television and political speeches and newspaper columns, for the sake of the economy, simply has to be this: War is hell, all right, but the only way a boy can become a man is in a shoot-out of some kind, preferably, but by no means necessarily, on a battlefield.

Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.

The insane, on occasion, are not without their charms.

I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves "Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment."

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them in order that the reader may see what they are made of.