Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

Groan and forget it.

A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.

Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.

Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.

A big iron needle stitching the country together.

I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.

There are two barriers that often prevent communication between the young and their elders. The first is middle-aged forgetfulness of the fact that they themselves are no longer young. The second is youthful ignorance of the fact that the middle aged are still alive.

Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.

Teaching is the royal road to learning.

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.

The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate.

Nothing is so dear as what you're about to leave.

Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.

Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.

Only a fool would refuse to enter a fool's paradise when that's the only paradise he'll ever have a chance to enter.

If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.

The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.

You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.

The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.

If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.

We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?

It is very east to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.

In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

A broken bone can heal but the wound a word opens can fester forever.

At fourteen you dont need sickness or death for tragedy.

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

Pleasure in irony ... is an ego trip.

But this is a true saying among men: the gifts of enemies are no gifts and profitless.

The Prophet defeated the enemies of Islam even when he and his followers were small in number.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

There are no enemies in science, professor. Only phenomena to study.

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Be assured those will be thy worst enemies, not to whom thou hast done evil, but who have done evil to thee. And those will be thy best friends, not to whom thou hast done good, but who have done good to thee.

Our most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin. Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!

Keep your enemies in front of you.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

Many have had their greatness made for them by their enemies.

It is not enough for me to win. My enemies must lose.