19 quotes
American author (1919–2010)
“You're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there.”
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
on Character
"It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true."
on Truth
"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
on Art
"She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together."
on Love
"We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound."
on Communication
"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to."
on Humor
"Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody."
on Death
"I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though."
on Life
"Mothers are all slightly insane."
on Relationships
"And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight."
on Emotion
"But what I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most."
on Curiosity
"A story never ends. The narrator is usually provided with a nice, artistic spot for his voice to stop, but that's about all."
on Writing
"Oh, God, if I'm anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I think people are plotting to make me happy."
"I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of trying to make me happy"
"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
"You don't know how to talk to people you don't like. Don't love, really. You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes."
"I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy."
on Happiness
"I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."
