What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both your fingers, until your fingers are broken?

The work of a writer, his continuing work, depends for breath of life on a certain privacy of heart.

Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.

Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.

I don't believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work and myself and what tortures of self-doubting the doubt of others has always given me.

Oh, you can't describe someone you're in love with!

Personal lyricism is the outcry of prisoner to prisoner from the cell in solitary where each is confined for the duration of his life.