I had learned a little about writing from Soldier's Pay - how to approach language, words: not with seriousness so much as an essayist does, but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite; even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions.

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.

Life is a process of preparing to be dead for a long time.

The most important thing is insight, that is to be - curious - to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does.

If there was anything at all in the Book, anything of hope and peace for His blind and bewildered spawn which He had chosen above all others to offer immortality, THOU SHALT NOT KILL must be it.

The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.