In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.

Dying can't be all that difficult-up to now everyone has managed to do it.

When I read it ["Tough Guys Don't Dance"], I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.

Over the years, I've found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write.

Culture is worth a little risk.

America has an almost obscene infatuation with itself. Has there ever been a big, powerful country that is as patriotic as America? And patriotic in the tinniest way, with so much flag waving? You'd really think we were some poor little republic, and that if one person lost his religion for one hour, the whole thing would crumble. America is the real religion in this country.

There's that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.