The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide, not murder.

What's the use of being a writer if you can't irritate a great many people?

I don't want to retire. I'm not that good at crossword puzzles

Amateurs... venture into scenes that a writer with more experience (and more professional concern) would bypass or eschew altogether.

I had the idea that there were two worlds. There was a real world as I called it, a world of wars and boxing clubs and children'shomes on back streets, and this real world was a world where orphans burned orphans.... I liked the other world in which almost everyone lived. The imaginary world.

Any workout which does not involve a certain minimum of danger or responsibility does not improve the body - it just wears it out.

Chicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood.