Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.

Writing cannot be done in a state of desirelessness.

A lawsuit is to ordinary life what war is to peacetime. In a lawsuit, everybody on the other side is bad. A trial transcript is a discourse in malevolence.

This is what it is the business of the artist to do. Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.

I was always trying to take art photographs, but the most interesting pictures were the snapshots. The artsy pictures were boring, always.

The writer, like the murderer, needs a motive.

Poets and novelists and playwrights make themselves, against terrible resistances, give over what the rest of us keep safely locked within our hearts.

If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph.

The camera is simply not the supple and powerful instrument of description that the pen is.

There are good photographers who might elevate themselves to the ranks of the great simply by burning most of their work.

Malice remains its animating impulse.

People would rather live in a community with unreasonable claims, than face loneliness with their truth

Of course there is no veneer, the process is one of growth, and primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

Whether it is your body, your mind, or the world – the idea of keeping a distance from it is to have a better perspective of everything.

Let the ‘why not’ philosophy be your life principle!

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

Fortunately, like most children, I had learned what is most valuable, most indispensable for life before school years began, taught by apple trees, by rain and sun, river and woods.

Advice from others is always filtered through self interest.

Happy birthday,” she said. “And next time? Eat the stupid cupcake.

If given the choice between Righteousness and Peace, I choose Righteousness.