Human greatness is a rather difficult thing to account for, and more often than not one is mistaken in one's hunches about somebody one has met.

You must remember always to give, of everything you have. You must give foolishly even. You must be extravagant. You must give to all who come into your life. Then nothing and no one shall have power to cheat you of anything, for if you give to a thief, he cannot steal from you, and he himself is then no longer a thief. And the more you give, the more you will have to give.

Every man is correct in asking God why he is stuck with himself, and his rotten luck.

Two years ago your father died, Ulysses. But as long as we are alive, as long as we are together, as long as two of us are left, and remember him, nothing in the world can take him from us.

This is what drives a young writer out of his head, this feeling that nothing is being said.

Sometimes the most intelligent thing is not to do anything, certainly nothing loaded with the imbecility of emotionality.

The mad also laugh, or is that what Freud and the others discovered perhaps, that only the mad laugh?