“When you start to live outside yourself, it's all dangerous.”

“Why, darling, I don't live at all when I'm not with 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.”

“I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.”

“The professor at the boxing gymnasium wore mustaches and was very precise and jerky and went all to pieces if you started after him.”

“we are all bitched from the start”

“It's this way, see--when a writer first starts out, he gets a big kick from the stuff he does, and the reader doesn't get any;then, after a while, the writer gets a little kick and the reader gets a little kick; and finally, if the writer's any good, he doesn't get any kick at all and the reader gets everything.”