Image: Jack Mitchell, CC BY-SA 4.0
19 quotes
American author (1924-1984)
“You can't blame a writer for what the characters say.”
"You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend."
on Love
"You can’t give your heart to a wild thing."
"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make."
on Writing
"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."
on Communication
"All children are morbid: it's their one saving grace."
on Childhood
"Love is a chain of love as nature is a chain of life."
"Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act."
on Life
"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour."
on Success
"Are the dead as lonesome as the living?"
on Death
"What are your chief vices? And virtues? I have no vices. The concept doesn't exist in my vocabulary. My chief virtue is gratitude"
on Gratitude
"Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries."
"I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other's sure to."
on Truth
"When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended for self-flagellation solely."
on Faith
"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor."
"A very fine artist can take something quite ordinary and, through sheer artistry and willpower, turn it into a work of art."
on Art
"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make."
"I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil."
"The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His works means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning."
