Great Throughts Treasury

"Perhaps wars weren't won anymore. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years' War."

"Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat - no matter who killed the meat for him."

"Please do it your own way. Do it in the mornings when your mind is cold. Do it in the evenings when everything is sold. Do it in the springtime when springtime isn't there do it in the winter. We know winter well do it on very hot days. Try doing it in hell. Trade bed for a pencil trade sorrow for a page. No work it out your own way. Have good luck at your age."

"Please tell me what can I do. There must be something I can do."

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I donÂ’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together."

"Pound's crazy. All poets are.... They have to be. You don't put a poet like Pound in the loony bin. For history's sake we shouldn't keep him there."

"Practice any faith you wish. Got a ball field up the island where you can practice. I'll give the Deity a fast one high and inside if he crowds the plate."

"Pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death"

"Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over."

"Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over."

"Read anything I write for the pleasure of reading it. Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading."

"Religion is the opium of the people. He believed that, that dyspeptic little joint-keeper. Yes, and music is the opium of the people. Old mount-to-the-head hadn't thought of that. And now economics is the opium of the people; along with patriotism the opium of the people in Italy and Germany. What about sexual intercourse; was that an opium of the people? Of some of the people. Of some of the best of the people. But drink was a sovereign opium of the people, oh, an excellent opium. Although some prefer the radio, another opium of the people, a cheap one he had just been using. Along with these went gambling, an opium of the people if there ever was one, one of the oldest. Ambition was another, an opium of the people along with a belief in any new form of government. What you wanted was the minimum of government, always less government. Liberty, what we believed in, now the name of a MacFadden publication. We believed in that although they had not found a new name for it yet. But what was the real one? What was the real, the actual, opium of the people? He knew it very well. It was gone just a little way around the corner in that well-lighted part of his mind that was there after two or more drinks in the evening; that he knew was there (it was not really there of course). What was it? He knew very well. What was it? Of course; bread was the opium of the people. Would he remember that and would it make sense in the daylight? Bread is the opium of the people."

"Remember everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong."

"Remember to get the weather in your damn book--weather is very important."

"Road to hell paved in unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault."

"Robert Jordan saw them there on the slope, close to him now, and below he saw the road and the bridge and the long lines of vehicles below it. He was completely integrated now and he took a good long look at everything. Then he looked up at the sky. There were big white clouds in it. He touched the palm of his hand against the pine needles where he lay and he touched the bark of the pine trunk that he lay behind... He was waiting until the officer reached the sunlit place where the first trees of the pine forest joined the green slope of the meadow. He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest."

"Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line. The others twisted themselves like cork-screws, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of the bull after his horns had passed, to give a faked look of danger. Afterward, all that was faked turned bad and gave an unpleasant feeling. RomeroÂ’s bull-fighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time. He did not have to emphasize their closeness. Brett saw how something that was beautiful done close to the bull was ridiculous if it were done a little way off. I told her how since the death of Joselito all the bull-fighters had been developing a technic that simulated this appearance of danger in order to give a fake emotional feeling, while the bull-fighter was really safe. Romero had the old thing, the holding of his purity of line through the maximum of exposure, while he dominated the bull by making him realize he was unattainable, while he prepared him for the killing."

"Say, there's plenty of Americans on this train. They've got seven cars of them from Dayton, Ohio."

"Scott Fitzgerald was mortally afraid of lightning."

"Scott told me about the Riviera and how my wife and I must come there' the next summer and how we would go there and how he would find a place for us that was not expensive and we would both work hard every day and swim and lie on the beach and be brown and only have a single aperitif before lunch and one before dinner. Zelda would be happy there, he said. She loved to swim and was a beautiful diver and she was happy with that life and would want him to work and everything would be disciplined. He and Zelda and their daughter were going to go there that summer. I was trying to get him to write his stories as well as he could and not trick them to conform to any formula, as he had explained that he did."

"Scott took literature so solemnly. He never understood that it was just writing as well as you can and finishing what you start."

"She should have. All women should see it. It's a face that ought to be thrown on every screen in the country. Every woman ought to be given a copy of this face as she leaves the altar. Mothers should tell their daughters about this face."

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

"She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey."

"She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after everyone else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things."

"She was sick and when she was sick she was sick as Southern women are sick."

"She was sitting up now. My arm was around her and she was leaning back against me, and we were quite calm. She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things,"

"She's vicious,' Miss Stein said. 'She's truly vicious, so she can never be happy except with new people. She corrupts people."

"'Shit,' said Eddie. 'What the fuck they kill that Davy for?'"

"Show the readers everything, tell them nothing."

"Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do."

"So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after and judged by these standards, which I do not defend, the bullfight is very normal to me because I feel very fine while it is going on and have a feeling of life and death and mortality and immortality, and after it is over I feel very sad but also very fine."

"So if your life trades seventy years for seventy hours I have that value now and I am lucky enough to know it. And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it."

"So now do not worry, take what you have, and do your work and you will have a long life and a very merry one."

"So this was how you died, in whispers that you did not hear."

"Some other places were not so good but maybe we were not so good when we were in them."

"Some people show evil as a great racehorse shows breeding. They have the dignity of a hard chancre."

"Some writers are only born to help another writer write one sentence."

"Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl."

"Something, or something awful or something wonderful was certain to happen on every day in this part of Africa."

"Spanish girls make wonderful wives. I've never had one so I know."

"Strong in all the Broken Places."

"Sure and what's your duty? What I said I'd do. And all the other things you said you'd do?"

"Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved."

"Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture."

"Take a good rest, small bird, he said. Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish."

"That every day should be a fiesta seemed to me a marvelous discovery."

"That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way."

"That night at the hotel, in our room with the long empty hall outside and our shoes outside the door, a thick carpet on the floor of the room, outside the windows the rain falling and in the room light and pleasant and cheerful, then the light out and it exciting with smooth sheets and the bed comfortable, feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others ... But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to the world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

"That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch."