"I remember what it is like to be in love before any of love’s complexities or realities or disturbances has entered in, to dilute its splendor and challenge its perfection."

"Very fine law,” said Stuart. “When I am Chairman, anybody who is mean to anybody else is going to catch it."

"He was sad because his new friend was so bloodthirsty."

"The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it."

"I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat."

"Life's accumulation is more discouraging than life itself, when stirred up."

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world."

"I am working on a new book about a boa constrictor and a litter of hyenas. The boa constrictor swallows the babies one by one, and the mother hyena dies laughing."

"By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is uncomfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience- if they did they would live elsewhere."

"To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year. "The Distant Music of the Hounds," 1954"

"Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people-- people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."

"Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning."

"It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."

"The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything"

"Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts."

"Remember that writing is translation, and the opus to be translated is yourself."

"Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone."

"The best writing is rewriting."

"In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone."

"I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens."

"I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular."

"A writer's style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias...it is the Self escaping into the open."

"I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all."

"The writer's way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?"