If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there’s no point in it. . . . for me, every act of art is the act of solving a...

Autumns reward western Kansas for the evils that the remaining seasons impose: winter’s rough Colorado winds and hip-high, sheep-slaughtering snows; the slushes and the strange land fogs of spring; and summer, when even crows seek...

Royal summoned mourners. They came from the village, from the neighboring hills and, wailing like dogs at midnight, laid siege to the house. Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves:...

Vivimos en la oscuridad, hacemos lo que podemos, el resto es la demencia del arte”. O palabras parecidas. En cualquier caso, míster James lo expone en toda la línea; nos está diciendo la verdad. Y...

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

The walls of the cell fell away, the sky came down, I saw the big yellow bird.

Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can’t have too many friends because then you’re just not really friends.

It snowed all week. Wheels and footsteps moved soundlessly on the street, as if the business of living continued secretly behind a pale but impenetrable curtain. In the falling quiet there was no sky or...

Perhaps, like most of us in a foreign country, he was incapable of placing people, selecting a frame for their picture, as he would at home; therefore all Americans had to be judged in a...

And in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.

You cold or something?’ he said. She strained against him; she wanted to pass clear through him: ‘It’s a chill, it’s nothing’; and then, pushing a little away: ‘Say you love me.’I said it.’No, oh...

She was still hugging the cat. “Poor slob,” she said, tickling his head, “poor slob without a name. It’s a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven’t any right to give him...

Imagination, of course, can open any door – turn the key and let terror walk right in.

Good luck and believe me, dearest Doc – it’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.

Some cities, like wrapped boxes under Christmas trees, conceal unexpected gifts, secret delights. Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes, containers of riddles never to be solved, nor even to be seen by vacationing visitors,...

But I’m not a saint yet. I’m an alcoholic. I’m a drug addict. I’m homosexual. I’m a genius.

Once a thing is set to happen, all you can do is hope it won’t. Or will-depending. As long as you live, there’s always something waiting, and even if it’s bad, and you know it’s...

The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His works means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning.

Don’t wanna sleep, don’t wanna die, just wanna go a-travelin’ through the pastures of the sky.

Are the dead as lonesome as the living?

Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,’ Holly advised him. ‘That was Doc’s mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with...

Strange where our passions carry us, floggingly pursue us, forcing upon us unwanted dreams, unwelcome destinies.

I love New York, even though it isn’t mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.

all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite,...

Those fellows, they’re always crying over killers. Never a thought for the victims.

If I could do anything, I would go to the middle of our planet, Earth, and seek uranium, rubies, and gold. I’d look for Unspoiled Monsters. Then I’d move to the country. –Florie Rotondo, age...

Because it’s indeed difficult to portray, in any meaningful depth, another being, his appearance, speech, mentality, without to some degree, and often for quite trifling cause, offending him. The truth seems to be the nobody...

You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who’s a friend.

A kind of silence, if I may say, was walking through the house, and, like most silence, it was not silent at all: it rapped on the doors, echoed in the clocks, creaked on the...

New York is a diamond iceberg floating in river water.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the music the words make.

Happiness leaves such slender records; it is the dark days that are so voluminously documented.

Dreams are the mind of the soul and the secret truth about us.

…he called after her as shedisappeared down the path, a pretty girl in a hurry…

He loved her, he loved her, and until he’d loved her she had never minded being alone….

The answer is good things only happen to you if you’re good. Good? Honest is more what I mean… Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I’d rather have cancer...

It’s bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

I have my superstitions, though. They could be termed quirks. I have to add up all numbers: there are some people I never telephone because their number adds up to an unlucky figure. Or I...

The average personality re-shapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul-desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change.

But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbell convenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. I discovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her...

Well, I’m about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.

The average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul – desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who...

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say.

I tell you, my dear, Narcissus was no egoist… he was merely another of us who, in our unshatterable isolation, recognized, on seeing his reflection, the one beautiful comrade, the only inseparable love… poor Narcissus,...

So little, once it has changed, changes back.

She was never without dark glasses, she was always well groomed, there was a consequential good taste in the plainness of her clothes, the blues and grays and lack of luster that made her, herself,...

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the...