After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?

Sometimes I think that the biggest difference between men and women is that more men need to seek out some terrible lurking thing in existence and hurl themselves upon it. Women know where it lives but they can let it alone.

What a weird thing smoking is and I can't stop it. I feel cosy, have a sense of well-being when I'm smoking, poisoning myself, killing myself slowly. Not so slowly maybe. I have all kinds of pains I don't want to know about and I know that's what they're from. But when I don't smoke I scarcely feel as if I'm living. I don't feel as if I'm living unless I'm killing myself.

After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?

Language is an archaeological vehicle... the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.

Me, what's that after all? An arbitrary limitation of being bounded by the people before and after and on either side. Where they leave off I begin, and vice versa.

The first thing I would say to young writers is, "Don't do it, unless you can't stand not to do it." And the second thing I would say is, "If you do do it, and get into it, the constant rule you should have in mind is to explore your material." It sounds simple, but it isn't, because people often want to get from A to B, and they don't stop to look at what is in the material.