And when I think about that, I think that if nothing but being married will help a man, he's durn nigh hopeless.

It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless.

And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless october, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air, listening to the dog and the echo of louis' voice dying away

...and you don't even have to sleep alone, you don't even have to sleep at all; and so, all you have to do is show the stick to the dog now and then and say, 'Thank God for nothing.'

I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.

In writing, you must kill all your darlings.

A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.