The Bible is not man's word about God, but God's word about man.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back.

In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.

More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.

The story of your life is not your life; it's your story.

Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?

Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state.

Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.

History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant

Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes.

'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' is one of the most famous books of all Japanese literature, written by the great poet Basho in 1689.

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

They all wanted to model for me because they knew I wouldn’t take advantage of them.

I guess the best way to describe that would be to connect with the fact that I came out of college just before the big Depression, and I came to New York.

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum.

To his orchestra Stop da music, stop da music! You're supposed to follow da music, not chase it all over da place.

I could have been a great many things.

The only way to remove pain from death is to remove love from life.

I'm pretty good at surprising friends and family with gifts. I tend to go towards the more sentimental side of giving.

Keep in mind that books, like art museums, are not always geared to the desires of the reader.