We thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also as a great giver of happiness and well being and delight.

What is moral is what you feel good after.

Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.

You will die like a dog for no good reason.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best -- make it all up -- but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

You're beautiful. You walk wonderfully and if I were here and saw you now for the first time I'd be in love with you. If I saw you for the first time everything would turn over inside of me and I'd ache right through my chest.

We're always lucky,' I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood.

If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.

I'm always reading books-as many as there are. I ration myself on them so that I'll always be in supply.

You are all a lost generation. with credit to Gertrude Stein.

Here is the piece. If you can't say fornicate can you say copulate or if not that can you say co-habit? If not that would have to say consummate I suppose. Use your own good taste and judgment.

Most people were heartless about turtles because a turtle's heart will beat for hours after it has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too.

Don't you like to write letters? I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something.

Nobody knows what's in him until he tries to pull it out. If there's nothing, or very little, the shock can kill a man.

We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.

The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places.

A wine shop was open and I went in for some coffee. It smelled of early morning, of swept dust, spoons in coffee-glasses and the wet circles left by wine glasses.

And this was the price you paid for sleeping together.