My heart’s broken,’ he thought. ‘If I feel this way my heart must be broken.

Neither for you nor for me. I’m sorry, fish.

The grain-fields went up the hillsides. Now as we went higher there was a wind blowing the grain.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know...

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.

Blood is thicker than water,”The young man saidAs he knifed his friendFor a drooling old bitchAnd a house full of lies.

There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s...

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?

I drink to make other people more interesting.

Don’t you believe I love you? Don’t know how I can make you believe. I didn’t want to kiss you goodbye–that was the trouble–I wanted to kiss you goodnight. […] Of course I love you....

Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself.

I write description in longhand because that’s hardest for me and you’re closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.

I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome...

You will die like a dog for no good reason.

I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist,...

My wife and I had called on Miss Stein, and she and the friend who lived with her had been very cordial and friendly and we had loved the big studio with the great paintings....

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

But after I got them to leave and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn’t any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and...

Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over.

I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me...

Love was the greatest thing, wasn’t it? Love was what we had that no one else had or could ever have? And you were a genius and I was your whole life. I was your...

I suppose she only wanted what she couldn’t have. Well, people were that way. To hell with people. The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling all that. Good advice, anyways. Not to...

This is the second day now that I do not know the result of the juegos he thought. But I must have confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all...

Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.

Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I’m deaf with it....

After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly...

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

We were no longer, technically, children although in many ways I am quite sure that we were. Childish has become a term of contempt. “Don’t be childish, darling.” “I hope to Christ I am. Don’t...

if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write...

Nick drank the coffee, the coffee according to Hopkins. The coffee was bitter. Nick laughed. It made a good ending to the story. His mind was starting to work. He knew he could choke it...

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of...

Hem,’ he said, and I knew he was a critic now, since, in conversation, they put your name at the beginning of a sentence rather than at the end.

You are going to die like a dog for no good reason

What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?

I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. 

Oh, darling, I’ve been so miserable.

A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.

Hem, you know I don’t think that owner’s wife where you live likes me. She wouldn’t let me wait upstairs for you.”I’ll tell her,’ I said.’Don’t bother. I can always wait here. It’s very pleasant...

There is no night life in Spain. They stay up late but they get up late. That is not night life. That is delaying the day. Night life is when you get up with a...

When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.

This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him for war; that ability not to ignore but to despise whatever bad ending there could be. This quality was destroyed by too...

I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people...

She looked fresh and young and very beautiful. I thought I had never seen any one so beautiful. ‘Hello,’ I said. When I saw her I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside...