All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.

Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.

It's fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their vocational education often has to be learned all over again after they leave school and college. On the other hand, they have open quick minds and if their education has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of a more rigid training.

If you liked a book, don't meet the author

Television is really what we've been looking for all our lives.... [It's] perfect. You turn a few knobs and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primordial ooze.

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