From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.

Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.

I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.

If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.

James Cain - faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat. He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naix, a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and a board fence and nobody looking. Such people are the offal of literature, not because they write about dirty things, but because they do it in a dirty way.

If you don't leave, I'll get somebody who will.

If you believe in an idea, you don't own you, it owns you.