I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true [...].

The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.

Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly.

I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em.

If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.

Pity can purge us of hostility and arouse feelings of identification with the characters, but it can also be a consoling reassurance which leads us to believe that we have understood, and that, in pitying, we have even done something to right a wrong.

It made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.