all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved.

A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird.

Hulga the whole while hollering like a half-slaughtered hog. (Attention, students of literature! Alliteration - have you noticed? - is my least vice.)

To wake up one morning and feel that I was a last a grown-up person, emptied of resentment, vengeful thoughts and other wasteful childish emotions. To find myself, in other words, an adult. Truman Capote

You're wonderful. Unique. I love you.

Most contemporary novelists, especially the American and the French, are too subjective, mesmerized by private demons; theyre enraptured by their navels and confined by a view that ends with their own toes.

I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does they might as well be dead.