A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn't stink a little bit of the writer's pride in having given up his pride..

Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way—I can't explain what….

They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. It's not so good, that way..

The cards are stacked (quite properly, I imagine) against all professional aesthetes, and no doubt we all deserve the dark, wordy, academic deaths we….

Some people you shouldn't kid, even if they deserve it..

We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound..

But if we come back, if German men come back, if British men come back, and Japs, and French, and all the other men, all of us talking, writing, pain….

As nearly as possible in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lima bean, I urge my editor, mentor an….

Nobody who's really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies.

People never believe you..

They didn't act like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to explain. They acted more like they knew they were celebrities and all. I me….

Oh, I don’t know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don’t know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It’s more inter….

Did you see more glass?.

People are always ruining things for you..

But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. Peopl….

But where does by far the bulk, the whole ambulance load, of pain really come from? Where must it come from? Isn't the true poet or painter a seer? I….

I'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm doing is trying to protect myself and my work..