Great Throughts Treasury

"How would that premise stand up if he examined it? That was probably why the Communists were always cracking down on Bohemiansism. When you were drunk or when you committed adultery you recognised your own personal fallability of that so mutable substitute for the apostles' creed, the party line. Down with Bohemianism, the sin of Majakowski."

"However you make your living is where your talent lies."

"Human beings may hide their feelings, but a cat does not."

"Humility is not disgraceful, and carries no loss of true pride."

"Hunger is good discipline and you learn from it."

"I always like the bad ones. I know he's a bad one of some sort."

"I always shot scorpions with the .22 pistol."

"I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows."

"I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day."

"I am always in love."

"I am an old man who will live until I die, Anselmo said."

"I am drunk, seest thou? When I am not drunk I do not talk. You have never heard me talk much. But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools."

"I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars."

"I am like a blind pig when I work."

"I am no romantic glorifier of the Spanish woman, nor did I ever think of a casual piece as anything much other than a casual piece in any country. But when I am with Maria I love her so that I feel, literally, as though I would die and I never believed in that or thought that it could happen."

"I am one of those who like to stay late at the cafe, the older waiter said. With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night. I want to go home and into bed. We are of two different kinds, the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night. I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone who needs the cafe."

"I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.-men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep-hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering."

"I am so in love with you that there isnÂ’t anything else."

"I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

"I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other."

"I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world--or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out too thin."

"I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try and make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. Then you write for who you love whether they can read or write or not and whether they are alive or dead."

"I belong to this notebook and this pencil."

"I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it."

"I could not fail myself and die on a fish like this, he said. Now that I have him coming so beautifully, God help me endure. I'll say a hundred Our Fathers and a hundred Hail Marys. But I cannot say them now. Consider them said, he thought. I'll say them later."

"I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about."

"I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and 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. There were many words that you could stand to hear and finally on the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates."

"I did not understand them but they did not have any mystery, and when I understood them they meant nothing to me. I was sorry about this but there was nothing I could do about it."

"I didn't want to kiss you goodbye — that was the trouble — I wanted to kiss you good night — and there's a lot of difference."

"I do not follow you. Many times I do not follow myself with pleasure."

"I do not think I had ever seen a nastier-looking man.... Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful rapist."

"I donÂ’t have to be proud of it. I only have to do it well."

"I donÂ’t know, the boy said. All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard."

"I donÂ’t. I donÂ’t want anybody else to touch you. IÂ’m silly. I get furious if they touch you."

"I don't feel any way,' the girl said. 'I just know things."

"I don't like to leave anything, the man said. I don't like to leave things behind."

"I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can't do it."

"I don't want to be your friend, baby. I am your friend."

"I drink to make other people more interesting."

"I even read aloud the part of the novel I had rewritten, which is about as low as a writer can get and much more dangerous for him than glacier skiing unroped before the full winter snowfall has set over the crevices. When they said, 'It's great, Ernest. Truly, it's great. You cannot know the thing it has, I wagged my tail in pleasure and plunged into the fiesta concept of life to see if I could not bring some attractive stick back, instead of thinking, 'If these bastards like it what is wrong with it?' That was what I would think if I had been functioning as a professional although, if I had been functioning as a professional, I would never have read it to them."

"I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life"

"I felt very lonely when they were all there."

"I guess you are all right. That was bad luck all right. Plenty bad luck"

"I had already seen the end of fall come through boyhood, youth and young manhood, and in one place you could write about it better than in another. That was called transplanting yourself, I thought, and it could be as necessary with people as with other sorts of growing things."

"I had an inheritance from my father, it was the moon and the sun. And though I roam all over the world, the spending of itÂ’s never done."

"I had drunk much wine and afterward coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things."

"I had gone to no place where the roads were frozen and hard as iron, where it was clear cold and dry and the snow was dry and powdery and hare-tracks in the snow and the peasants took off their hats and called you Lord and there was good hunting. I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafés and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring. Suddenly to care very much and to sleep to wake with it sometimes morning and all that had been there gone and everything sharp and hard and clear and sometimes a dispute about the cost. Sometimes still pleasant and fond and warm and breakfast and lunch. Sometimes all niceness gone and glad to get out on the street but always another day starting and then another night. I tried to tell about the night and the difference between the night and the day and how the night was better unless the day was very clean and cold and I could not tell it; as I cannot tell it now"

"I had gone... to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring. Suddenly to care very much and to sleep to wake with it sometimes morning and all that had been there gone and everything sharp and hard and clear and sometimes a dispute about the cost. Sometimes still pleasant and fond and warm and breakfast and lunch. Sometimes all niceness gone and glad to get out on the street but always another day starting and then another night. I tried to tell about the night and the difference between the night and the day and how the night was better unless the day was very clean and cold and I could not tell it; as I cannot tell it now. But if you have had it you know."

"I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it."

"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."