"I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."

"If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more."

"Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it."

"Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad."

"It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road."

"The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid."

"If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible."

"Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do."

"I can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood."

"I love you to pieces, distraction, etc."

"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."

"Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions."

"Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell."

"I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you."

"I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it."

"Sleep tight, ya morons!"

"It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true."

"Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row."

"I don’t give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am - I really do - but people never notice it. People never notice anything."

"I have scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me."

"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."

"It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out."

"This is a people shooting hat," I said. "I shoot people in this hat."

"I don't even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it."

"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. I mean you can’t help it sometimes."

"She was not one for emptying her face of expression."

"You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world."

"Who wants flowers when youre dead? nobody."

"Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will."

"It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes."

"It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world."

"If you weren't around, I'd probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some goddamn place. You're the only reason I'm around, practically."

"That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think."

"I privately say to you, old friend... please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parentheses: (((())))."

"If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable."

"Don't tell people what you are thinking, or you will miss them terribly when you are away."

"I wouldn't exactly describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out, though."

"I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door." ( A Boy in France : Saturday Evening Post CCXVII, March 31, 1945)"

"She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the light bulbs."

"Sometimes I see me dead in the rain."

"If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did."

"But I'm Crazy. I swear to God I am."

"I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of the writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one."

"Your heart, Bessie, is an autumn garage."

"[...] don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? ... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy."

"She wrote to him fairly regularly, from a paradise of triple exclamation points and inaccurate observations."

"It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean, how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question."

"I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life."

"People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it."