“(speaking of insecurity)"It's broken greater spirits than ours, and robbed the world of God knows how much beauty. I've seen it happen more times than I like to think about."--"$10,000 A Year, Easy”

“I sing of happiness, he says, and insecurity shows through--poisons it. I sing of unhappiness, and it spoils that, too, because my real unhappiness isn't great or noble but cheap--money unhappiness.--"$10,000 a Year, Easy”

“People who sell bolts and nuts and locomotives and frozen orange juice make billions, while the people who struggle to bring a little beauty into the world, give life a little meaning, they starve.--"$10,000 A Year, Easy”

“There was no question about it- the girl in the photograph was staggeringly beautiful. She was Miss Canal Zone, a runner-up in the Miss Universe Contest -- and in fact far more beautiful than the winner of the contests. Her beauty had frightened the judges.”

“I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.”

“Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.”

“It is always pitiful when any human being falls into a condition hardly more respectable than that of an animal. How much more pitiful it is when the person who falls has had all the advantages!”