-
I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.
-
I felt very lonely when they were all there.
-
One cat just leads to another.
-
My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.
-
Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?
-
There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
-
What did I know best that I had not written about and Lost? What did I know about truly and care for the most?
-
Rereading places you at the point where it has to go on, knowing it is as good as you can get it up to there. There is always juice somewhere.
-
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
-
Never confuse movement with action.
-
There is no night life in Spain. They stay up late but they get up late. That is not night life. That is delaying the day.
-
I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together
-
Most people are heartless about turtles because a turtle's heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs.
-
War is no longer made by simply analyzed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule.
-
Never delay kissing a pretty girl or opening a bottle of whiskey
-
I was always a lonely person when I was with everyone.
-
I do not think I had ever seen a nastier-looking man. Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist.
-
Worry destroys the ability to write.
-
Wine is the most civilized thing in the world.
-
Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?
-
If the wind rises it can push us against the flood when it comes.
-
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
-
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
-
I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.