But he stays by the window, remembering that life. They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everyt….

Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is ris….

All of us, all of us, all of us trying to save our immortal souls, some ways seemingly more round about and mysterious than others. We are having a g….

I am too nervous to eat pie..

And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth..

Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never ca….

Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement..

This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world..

It's akin to style, what I'm talking about, but it isn't style alone. It is the writer's particular and unmistakable signature on everything he write….

It's strange. You never start out life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief. Or a liar..

Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it..

Art doesn't have to do anything. It just has to be there for the fierce pleasure we take in doing it..

Something’s died in me,” she goes. “It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something, just like you’d took an axe to it. E….

In the beginning, when I was trying to write, I couldnt turn off the outside world to the extent that I can now..

Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He'd said he'd spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical school. He….

Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate..

Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications..

Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that..

Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn't hurt t….

She won't give him back his look..

He wondered if she wondered if he were watching her..