“It's a hard life if you don't weaken.”

“It's hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.”

“You don't always talk with your mouth. Sometimes what you say with your mouth hardly matters at all. You have to signify”

“Because things like this you can only ssay once. And you either get it wrong or right, it's the end either way, because it's too hard to ever try to say again.”

“Running a close second [as a writing lesson] was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”

“It's just that I was thinking you don't ride in that truck of yours, you wear it.”

“I don't want to see it anymore. It's lousy. And it's a cheat. You build it all around something... set yourself on something... and then you don't want it. Isn't it too bad the great truths are all such lies?”