[A writer] should try not to be too far, personally, below the level of his work.

One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.

Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.

Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.

We are minor in everything but our passions.

Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.

Disappointment tears the bearable film off life.

Flowers are prettiest where they are watered the most.

I wrote The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God in five hours, but I had it all planned out. It isn't poetry and it does not pretend to be, but it does what it sets out to do.

All advertising, whether it lies in the field of business or of politics, will carry success by continuity and regular uniformity of application.

Children know the grace of god better than most of us. They see the world the way the morning brings it back to them; new and born and fresh and wonderful.

The world is run by the people who show up.

This must be how the guys in Space Jam felt when MJ gave them their powers back through that old basketball.

I'm the only thing I'll ever hold against you.

Memory creates a hallucination of the past, desire creates a hallucination of the future.

The book trade is a spiritual barometer of a nations well-being.

[The producer told me:] "We can try one more record, and we'll see how that one does." Those records never did anything. My music never got mentioned. My color got mentioned.