Life is sad enough without people writing sad books.

If you let conditions stop you from working, they'll always stop you.

America is so vast that almost everything said about it is likely to be true, and the opposite is probably equally true.

Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write.

The danger of censorship in cultural media increases in proportion to the degree to which one approaches the winning of a mass audience.

Studs Lonigan, on the verge of fifteen, and wearing his first suit of long trousers, stood in the bathroom with a Sweet Caporal pasted on his mug.

Life was hard on mothers; but then, they just didn't understand.

There's one good kind of writer - a dead one.

So long, Lee. Give our regards to the Kaiser. And tell him there's a few boys on 58th Street who'll throw a party for him if he'll drop around.

America is so vast that almost everything said about it is likely to be true and the opposite is probably equally true.

Life is like a cooking pot. If you cook something good, you well get something tasty. If you cook something bad, you will get something bad.

A human being born into a cold, indifferent world will regard his situation as the only possible one.

Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.

The challenge of film is making it right there at that moment, and then you get to move on.

One way of reading my life is that I have been in constant search for a father.

Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose, and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour.

My career has been full of remarkable coincidences that have nothing to do with me.

There is no greater sign of a bad cause, than when the patrons of it are reduced to the necessity of making use of the most wicked artifices to support it.

It comes so soon, the moment when there is nothing left to wait for.

The only way to establish any kind of mystique, is to completely shut up and never talk to anyone. And I'm contractually obligated not to shut up.