Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them.

As for himself, however hateful life was, it was hateful in a home and not in the gutter. Many Americans hated their homes. The number of homeless in America couldn't touch the number of Americans who had homes and families and hated the whole thing.

I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface

The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions.

To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really.

Should you protect profits? Yes. But run for the hills? No.

You be greater than your feelings. I don't demand this of you - life does. Otherwise you'll be washed away by feelings. You'll be washed out to sea and never seen again.