“This is a hell of dull talk... How about some of that champagne?”

“Let’s not talk about how I am. It’s a subject I know too much about to want to think about anymore.”

“You'll lose it, if you talk about it”

“Though there is one part of writing that is solid and you do it no harm by talking about it, the other is fragile, and if you talk about it, the structure cracks and you have nothing.”

“She talked all the time and at first it was about people and places.”

“The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.”

“In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you'll dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it to 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.”