The fruit of youth or of the grape, the transitory magic of the brief passage from darkness to darkness - the old illusion that truth and beauty were in some way entwined.

Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.

I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go

Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.

There was a kindliness about intoxication - there was that indescribable gloss and glamour it gave, like the memories of ephemeral and faded evenings.

Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.

It was too late - everything was too late. For years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable as water.

Art isn't meaningless... It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.

They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two.

I had traded the fight against love for the fight against loneliness, the fight against life for the fight against death.

Experience is not worth the getting. It's not a thing that happens pleasantly to a passive you--it's a wall that an active you runs up against.

Growing up is the dumbest thing I ever wanted to rush into.

People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.

Roman influence seeds itself, sprouting mighty oaks right through the modern forest of computers, digital disks, microviruses and space satellites.

I was not going to use writing for advertising or journalism. I would tend bar, load trucks, chauffeur - do whatever it took. But from the moment I took my first writing workshop, I was a writer.

Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?

Vets do what doctors used to - diagnose the injury or the condition, patch it up as best they can and remind you that these things happen and that in life we are also in the midst of death.

When I joined an all-boys baseball team, my mom wasn't too happy. I proved to her (and to me) that I could do anything I set my mind to.

All that's bright must fade, The brightest still the fleetest; All that's sweet was made But to be lost when sweetest.

Love is counting someone else’s needs and interests as more important than your own needs or interests or comfort.