Great Throughts Treasury

"You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself."

"You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it.But the best writing is certainly when you are in love."

"you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another."

"You did not have to like it because you understood it. He could beat anything, he thought, because nothing could hurt him if he did not care."

"You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?"

"You don't have to destroy me. Do you? I'm only a woman who loves you and wants to do what you want to do. I've been destroyed two or three times already. You wouldn't want to destroy me again, would you?"

"You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason."

"You felt, in spite of all bureaucracy and inefficiency and party strife something that was like the feeling you expected to have and did not have when you made your first communion. It was a feeling of consecration to a duty toward all of the oppressed of the world which would be as difficult and embarrassing to speak about as religious experience and yet it was as authentic as the feeling you had when you heard Bach, or stood in Chartres Cathedral or the Cathedral at León and saw the light coming through the great windows; or when you saw Mantegna and Greco and Brueghel in the Prado. It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. It was something that you had never known before but that you had experienced now and you gave such importance to it and the reasons for it that you own death seemed of complete unimportance; only a thing to be avoided because it would interfere with the performance of your duty. But the best thing was that there was something you could do about this feeling and this necessity too. You could fight."

"You had to have these peasant leaders quickly in this sort of war and a real peasant leader might be a little too much like Pablo. You couldn't wait for the real Peasant Leader to arrive and he might have too many peasant characteristics when he did. So you had to manifacture one. At that, from what he had seen of Campesino, with his black beard, his thick negroid lips, and his feverish, staring eyes, he thought he might give almost as much trouble as a real peasant leader. The last time he had seen him he seemed to have gotten to believe his own publicity and think he was a peasant."

"You have to make it inside of yourself wherever you are."

"You know I don't love anyone but you. You shouldn't mind because someone else loved me."

"You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch. Yes. It's sort of what we have instead of God."

"You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple."

"You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it."

"You know what makes a good loser? Practice."

"You know youÂ’re writing well when youÂ’re throwing good stuff into the wastebasket."

"You lose it if you talk about it."

"You make something from things that have happened and from things that exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, and you make something through your invention that is truer than anything true and alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality."

"You make your own luck, Gig. You know what makes a good loser? Practice."

"You may not believe this. No one believes this, but it is true."

"You must be prepared to work always without applause."

"You never kill anyone you want to kill in a war, he said to himself."

"You never understand anybody that loves you."

"You ought to dream. All our biggest businessmen have been dreamers."

"You roll back to me."

"You see it's awfully hard to talk or write about your own stuff because if it is any good you yourself know about how good it is — but if you say so yourself you feel like a shit."

"You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad."

"You want to say that I have not marked by the seal of death? - I asked, unable to resist. - No, you are stamped Life. - The last word he pronounced with a capital letter."

"You will die like a dog for no good reason."

"You won't do our things with another girl, or say the same things, will you?"

"You write a book like that that you're fond of over the years, then you see that happen to it, it's like pissing in your father's beer."

"YouÂ’re my religion. YouÂ’re all IÂ’ve got."

"You'll lose it, if you talk about it"

"Your blood coagulates beautifully."

"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes."

"You're awfully dark, brother, he said. You don't know how dark."

"You're beautiful, like a May fly."

"You're going to have things to repent, boy,' Mr. John had told Nick. 'That's one of the best things there is. You can always decide whether to repent them or not. But the thing is to have them."

"'You're going to write straight and simple and good now. That's the start.'"

"You're my religion. You're all I've got."

"You're not a moron. You're only a case of arrested development."

"You're remembering well today,' she said. 'Don't do it too much."

"You've such a lovely temperature."

"Zelda was very beautiful and was tanned a lovely gold color and her hair was a beautiful dark gold and she was very friendly. Her hawk's eyes were clear and calm. I knew everything was all right and was going to turn out well in the end when she leaned forward and said to me, telling me her great secret, 'Ernest, don't you think Al Jolson is greater than Jesus?' Nobody thought anything of it at the time. It was only Zelda's secret that she shared with me, as a hawk might share something with a man. But hawks do not share. Scott did not write anything anymore that was good until after he knew that she was insane."