If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
Some other places were not so good but maybe we were not so good when we were in them.
In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason.
What a writer has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.
All things truly wicked start from innocence.
All our words from loose using have lost their edge.
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.
If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.
Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.
Man is not made for defeat.
That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.
Never mistake motion for action.
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don't cheat with it.
Heresy is the foe of countenance.
Life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose.
To win a war, we must kill our enemies.
In order to write about life first you must live it.
For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.
