It's a terrible waste to be happy and not notice it.

Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.

I had a friend who was a heavy drinker. If somebody asked him if he'd been drunk the night before, he would always answer offhandedly, 'Oh, I imagine.' I've always liked that answer. It acknowledges life as a dream.

The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one's soul to grow.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

I've written about Powers Hapgood. He was a Harvard graduate, son of a wealthy family who owned a cannery out there. After leaving Harvard, he went to work in coal mines and then was a CIO executive when I met him there, in Indianapolis.

My God, the religious right will not acknowledge what a merciful person Jesus was.