“It's a f*** you world. Well, keep it going anyhow, what the hell.”

“well, death says, as he walks by, I'm going to get you anyhow no matter what you've been: writer, cab-driver, pimp, butcher, sky-diver, I'm going to get you”

“(You can shoot a barracuda between the eyes and it won't go to hell because it doesn't know where or what hell is...)”

“Someday,” I told Jan, “when they demonstrate that the world has four dimensions instead of just three, a man will be able to go for a walk and just disappear. No burial, no tears, no illusions, no heaven or hell. People will be sitting around and they’ll say, ‘What happened to George?’ And somebody will say, ‘Well, I don’t know. He said he was going out for a pack of cigarettes.”

“What will you do?""Oh, hell, I'll write a novel about writing the screenplay and making the movie.""What are you going to call it?""Hollywood.""Hollywood?""Yes...”

“Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.”

“He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.”