"But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius."

"Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act."

"A very fine artist can take something quite ordinary and, through sheer artistry and willpower, turn it into a work of art."

"Before publication, and if provided by persons whose judgment you trust, yes, of course criticism helps. But after something is published, all I want to read or hear is praise."

"Some cities, like wrapped boxes under Christmas trees, conceal unexpected gifts, secret delights. Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes, containers of riddles never to be solved, nor even to be seen by vacationing visitors, or, for that matter, the most inquisitive, persistent travelers."

"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make."

"Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go."

"Royal summoned mourners. They came from the village, from the neighboring hills and, wailing like dogs at midnight, laid siege to the house. Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves: it was the art of sorrow, and those who best mimicked grief were much admired. After the funeral everyone went away, satisfied that they'd done a good job."

"Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy."

"Perhaps, like most of us in a foreign country, he was incapable of placing people, selecting a frame for their picture, as he would at home; therefore all Americans had to be judged in a pretty equal light, and on this basis his companions appeared to be tolerable examples of local color and national character."

"I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it."

"It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have."

"Of course there is a Santa Claus. It's just that no single somebody could do all he has to do. So the Lord has spread the task among us all. That's why everybody is Santa Claus. I am. You are."

"Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in."

"Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell."

"That's not writing that's typing."

"Love is a chain of love as nature is a chain of life."

"Happiness leaves such slender records, it is the dark days that are so voluminously documented."

"So if black power means black armies racing through the streets, creating havoc, that certainly does nothing to advance the legitimate political and economic aspirations of the black community. Just the opposite, in fact....If they think a few Molotov cocktails are going to bring down the whole system and build something new, I'm afraid they're just indulging in wishful-thinking."

"You can't blame a writer for what the characters say."

"I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true."

"It was as if I were an oyster and somebody forced a grain of sand into my shell - a grain of sand that I didn't know was there and didn't particularly welcome. Then a pearl started forming around the grain and it irritated me, made me angry, tortured me sometimes. But the oyster can't help becoming obsessed with the pearl."

"If we know the past, and live the present, it is possible that we dream the future?"

"Strange where our passions carry us, floggingly pursue us, forcing upon us unwanted dreams, unwelcome destinies."

"Yes: but aren't love and marriage notoriously synonymous in the minds of most women? Certainly very few men get the first without promising the second: love, that is-if it's just a matter of spreading her legs, almost any woman will do that for nothing."

"The blame of course belonged to Clyde, who just was not much given to talk. Also, he seemed very little curious himself: Grady, alarmed sometimes by the meagerness of his inquiries and the indifference this might suggest, supplied him liberally with personal information; which isn't to say she always told the truth, how many people in love do? or can? but at least she permitted him enough truth to account more or less accurately for all the life she had lived away from him. It was her feeling, however, that he would as soon not hear her confessions: he seemed to want her to be as elusive, as secretive as he was himself."

"I know it's become fashionable to depict the police as sadistic Cossacks riding down innocent citizens, but I've become well enough acquainted with law-enforcement agencies across the country to know that's just not the case. Of course, a certain small percentage of policemen are irresponsible...but that doesn't justify the current unjust barrage of propaganda against a tribe of men who are hard-working, underpaid and daily risking their lives to protect us. I'm sure there are isolated instances of police brutality, but the rising crime rate and urban violence constitute a far, far more pressing problem."

"When he was in the army he'd picked up a great many girls: sometimes nothing happened except a lot of talk, and that was all right too: because it didn't matter what you said to them, for in those transient moments lies or truth were arbitrary and you were whatever you wanted to be."

"He called after her as shedisappeared down the path, a pretty girl in a hurry."

"Are the dead as lonesome as the living?"

"New York is a diamond iceberg floating in river water."

"The walls of the cell fell away, the sky came down, I saw the big yellow bird."

"Fitzgerald has charm. It's a silly word, but it's an exact word for me. I like 'The Great Gatsby' and it's sad, gay nostalgia."

"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."

"I only object when any one particular group...gets a stranglehold on American criticism and squeezes out anybody who doesn't conform to its own standards....The ax falls, ecumenically, on the head of anybody...who doesn't share this group's parochial preoccupations."

"You can't give your heart to a wild thing."

"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor."

"Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there."

"Somewhere in this world there exists an exceptional philosopher named Florie Rotondo.The other day I came across one of her ruminations printed in a magazine devoted to the writings of schoolchildren. It said: 'If I could do anything, I would go to the middle of our planet, Earth, and seek uranium, rubies, and gold. I'd look for Unspoiled Monsters. Then I'd move to the country. -Florie Rotondo, age 8.Florie, honey, I know just what you mean " even if you don't: how could you, age eight?"

"Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it."

"I think the whole student rebellion is not really a rebellion at all....They want a certain kind of identity, they're jockeying with each other for political power in their own culture. The basis for this behavior is a desire for notoriety."