Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the so...
It's easy to want to be an author. You see it in your mind with sun streaming through windows and a Siamese cat purring on an antique rug and a little pellet stove and somehow the bills are paid and there's wit and self-sufficiency and divine inspira...
Cal: “I’m not presuming. I know exactly what you think about me. You think I’m an anal-retentive Armrest Nazi . . . an arrogant Modelizer. You can’t stand the way I talk, any of the subjects I choose to talk about, the imperious manner I orde...
I should have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? A mysterious but truthful answer is that while I can gear myself up to do a novel, letters, real-life ...
I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable mother!--five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! . . . Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are st...
Writing, music, sculpting, painting, and prayer! These are the three things that are most closely related! Writers, musicians, sculptors, painters, and the faithful are the ones who make things out of nothing. Everybody else, they make things out of ...
A word of warning here. The events as you remember them will never be the same in your memory once you have turned them into a memoir. For years I have worried that if I turn all of my life into literature, I won't have any real life left - just stor...
Clementine: You don't tell me things, Joel. I'm an open book. I tell you everything... every damn embarrassing thing. You don't trust me. Joel: Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating. Clementine: I don't do that. I want to know you. [angr...
[first lines] Heather: So even if Columbus got lost and wasn't the first to discover America, he's still my hero. He was really brave to sail in such a tiny ship over a really big ocean. And because of him, we get Columbus Day off of school. Teacher:...
[first lines] Waldo Lydecker: [narrating off screen] I shall never forget the weekend Laura died. A silver sun burned through the sky like a huge magnifying glass. It was the hottest Sunday in my recollection. I felt as if I were the only human being...
Big Dave Brewster: Japs had us pinned down in Buna for something like six weeks. Well, I gotta tell ya, I thought *we* had it tough, but, Jesus, we had supply. *They* were eating grubs, nuts, thistles. When we finally up and bust off the beach we fou...
General Ralph Landry: You know, when they forced Khruschev out, he sat down and wrote two letters to his successor. He said - "When you get yourself into a situation you can't get out of, open the first letter, and you'll be safe. When you get yourse...
[opening narration immediately after the title sequence] Brian Johnson: Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois, 60062. Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever i...
The Joker: [when Batman picks up the phone in Andrea's apartment] Hello, anybody home? Listen, boopsie, even though you never call and never write, I still got a soft spot for you. So I'm sending you a fun gift, airmail! And there's no use jumping ou...
At night I would return home, set out a lamp before me, and devote myself to reading and writing. Whenever sleep overcame me or I became conscious of weakening, I would turn aside to drink a cup of wine, so that my strength would return to me. Then I...
What appears most disquieting to me in isolation is the dilemma of how to use time. There is either too much or too little of it; we either live inside painfully contracting horizons, or feel ourselves isolated in the vastness of space. I seem to hav...
Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on s...
It may take a decade or two before the extent of Shakespeare's collaboration passes from the graduate seminar to the undergraduate lecture, and finally to popular biography, by which time it will be one of those things about Shakespeare that we thoug...
Words are not just wind. Words have something to say. But if what they have to say is not fixed, then do they really say something? Or do they say nothing? People suppose that words are different from the peeps of baby birds, but is there any differe...
In the end, this volume should be read a s a collection of love stories, Above all, they are tales of love, not the love with which so many stories end – the love of fidelity, kindness and fertility – but the other side of love, its cruelty, ster...
I went to the library. I looked at the magazines, at the pictures in them. One day I went to the bookshelves, and pulled out a book. It was Winesburg, Ohio.. I sat at a long mahogany table and began to read. All at once my world turned over. The sky ...
