1. "Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similies (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition(the lowest thing I can think of at this time)."
2. ”All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.”
3. "All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time."
4. "All things truly wicked start from an innocence."
5. “Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”
6. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
7. “Courage is grace under Pressure.”
8. ”Cowardice . . . is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.”
9. “Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.”
10. “Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.”
11. "From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?"
12. “I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.”
13. ”If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.”
14. ”If people bring so much courage to this world, the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
15. "If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work."
16. "I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend you to a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success."
17. “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”
18. "I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"
19. "In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused."
20. “In order to write about life, first you must live it!”
21. ”In writing I have moved through arithmetic, through plane geometry and algebra, and now I am in calculus. If they don't understand that, to hell with them.”
22. "I only know that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
23. “It is not liberty not to bury the mess one makes.... No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist.”
24. ”It is not unnatural that the best writers are liars. A major part of their trade is to lie or invent and they will lie when they are drunk, or to themselves, or to strangers. They often lie unconsciously and then remember the lies with great remorse. If they knew all other writers were liars, too, it would cheer them up.”
25. Killing cleanly and in a way which gives you esthetic pride and pleasure has always been one of the greatest enjoyments of a part of the human race.”
26. "Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you."
27. "My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way."
28. ”Never mistake motion for action.”
29. “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”
30. ”. . . that is the great fallacy; the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
31. “One cat just leads to another.”
32. “Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with the.”
33. “That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.”
34. “The art of the torero is] the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.”
35. "The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life --and one is as good as the other."
36. “The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.”
37. "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector."
38. "The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself."
39. "There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things, and, because it takes a man's life to know them, the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave."
40. "There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The sharks are all sharks, no better and no worse. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know."
41. "There's no one thing that is true. They're all true."
42. “The world breaks everyone and afterward, many are strong at the broken places. Those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
43. "The world is a fine place worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it."
44. "The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it."
45. ”What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”
46. ”When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”
47. “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”
48. "You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it."
49. “You must be prepared to work always without applause.”
50. “You see I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across - not to just depict life - or criticize it - but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can't believe in it. Things aren't that way. It is only by showing both sides - 3 dimensions and if possible 4 that you can write the way I want to.”
