The phenomenon of war is its hermaphroditism: the principles of victory and of defeat inhabit the same body and the necessary opponent, enemy, is merely the bed they self-exhaust each other on.

The quality an artist must have is objectivity in judging his work, plus the honesty and courage not to kid himself about it.

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

Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.

When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow.

I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.

I think that-that anyone, the painter, the musician, the writer works in a-a kind of an-an insane fury. He's demon-driven. He can get up feeling rotten, with a hangover, or with-with actual pain, and-and if he gets to work, the first thing he knows, he don't remember that pain, that hangover-he's too busy.