A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.

To say goodbye is to die a little.

There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.

I'm killing time and it's dying hard.

The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.

You like it in jail?""It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?

You like it in jail?It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?

You like it in jail?''It's not too bad. You don't meet the best people, but who the hell wants to?

One would think a writer would be happy here -- if a writer is every happy anywhere.

Time makes everything mean and shabby and wrinkled. The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful things die young, but that they grow old and mean.

His laugh and his voice were both pleasant. He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they learned to talk Flatbush.

Ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace.

I'm not asking the public to trust me I'm asking the public to trust themselves.

As a legal matter, my mother is an American citizen by birth.

Background checks, waiting periods, reports of transfers, and access to mental health records have not stopped the legal sale of firearms to legitimate buyers.

There is an inherent tolerance and kindness in the state school teenagers I know.

There's a thrill in the midst of the hardship in knowing that I'm making the invisible real. And I'm doing what I want.

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

Predictability brings about security.

Another suggestion is to cook a meal, maybe not every night, but a couple more times a week than you usually do. That way you have leftovers, and you take your lunch to work.

The most sublime act is to set another before you.