Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.
The only faithfulness people have is to emotions they’re trying to recapture
Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.
Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the doom that may also be on the way.p.207
If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.
Yank! Yank! We you come to get Yank. We you come to get.
You don’t know a woman until you’ve met her in court.
I won’t stay inwith married menany moresaid the wise girlthey’re too agreeable,it’s a little too muchlike curlingupwith the good book.You meanagood bookOh, dear,did I saythegood booksighed the witch.
Faction is that hybrid of documented fact and novelistic elaboration.
We are all so guilty at the way we have allowed the world around us to become more ugly and tasteless every year that we surrender to terror and steep ourselves in it.
I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946. We were both war heroes, and both of us had just been elected to Congress.
I wonder, said the Lord I wonder if I know the answer any more.
Every time I move I squash something said Loathesome.
Let everywritertell hisownliesThat’s freedomof thepress.
Poems should be like pins which prick the skin of boredom and leave a glow equal in its pride to the gate of the sadist who stuck the pin and walked away
How his hatred seethed in search of a justifiable excuse.
Kerouac lacks discipline, intelligence, honesty and a sense of the novel. His rhythms are erratic, his sense of character is nil, and he is as pretentious as a rich whore, sentimental as a lollypop.
There is something silly about a man who wears a white suit all the time, especially in New York.” (on Tom Wolfe)
Prevarication, like honesty, is reflexive, and soon becomes a sturdy habit, as reliable as truth.
With the pride of the artist you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.
With the pride of the artist you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.
As many people die from an excess of timidity as from bravery.
The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide not murder.
I think it’s bad to talk about one’s present work for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.
Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.
With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.
There are four stages in a marriage. First there’s the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.
In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.
The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.