But he does look stupid.' Yearning. Not stupid. He wants awfully to be on the inside staring out: anybody with their nose pressed against a glass is liable to look stupid.

As long as you live, there's always something waiting; and even if it's bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can't stop living.

What we want most is to be held...and told..that everything (everything is a funny thing, is baby milk and papa's eyes, is roaring logs on a cold morning, is hoot owls and the boy who makes you cry after school, is mama's long hair, is being afraid and twisted faces on the bedroom wall)...is going to be alright.

I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods.

...of all things this was the saddest, that life goes on: if one leaves one's lover, life should stop for him, and if one disappears from the world, then the world should stop, too: and it never did. And that was the real reason for most people getting up in the morning: not because it would matter but because it wouldn't.

A man who doesn't dream is like a man who doesn't sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.

The better the actor, the more stupid he is.