43 quotes
American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter (1933–2023)
“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”
"All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes."
on Life
"Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery."
on Philosophy
"The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow."
on Grief
"In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will."
"Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting."
on Ambition
"Every day is a lie. But you are dying. That is not a lie."
on Truth
"Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from."
"There is no God and we are his prophets."
"Every day is a lie, he said. But you are dying. That is not a lie."
"I believe that we are arks of the covenant and our true nature is not rage or deceit or terror or logic or craft or even sorrow. It is longing."
"What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not."
"People always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn't even know they were there."
"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
"If war is not holy man is nothing but antic clay."
"Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."
"Each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins."
"He believed in God even if he was doubtful of men's claims to know God's mind. But that a God unable to forgive was no God at all."
on Faith
"Words are things. The words he is in possession of he cannot be deprived of. Their authority transcends his ignorance of their meaning."
on Language
"Life is a memory, then it is nothing. All law is writ in a seed."
"Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real."
