The artistic temperament is too often only an alibi for lack of responsibility....

A true lover is like a flower.

For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.

It's not terribly dignified to have anyone seeing one laugh at one's own material.

The aim is to get as much going out the back as is coming in. You've got to do that because for everything you get in you've got to give something out.

The connection that I have with my readers makes me very happy, and gives meaning to the strange profession of writing

If you make some comment even obliquely alluding to menstruation or menopause and its effect on my judgment," Murphy interrupted, "I will break your arm in eleven places.

He said you couldn't pretend the terrible things in life didn't happen. You can't clean it up. You keep all the refuse and the scars. It's how you learn. And try to make improvements.

All he knew was that they fit somehow, and that he felt as if he spent most of his life traveling a path that led inexorably to her.

We are far betting dealing with the big losses-death, divorce, debt, and debilitating illness-than with the daily onslaught of little losses.

Run and become. Become and run. Run to succeed in the outer world. Become to proceed in the inner world.