They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.

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.

It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.

If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy. But since I am not, I do not care.

Wine is a grand thing,” I said. “It makes you forget all the bad.

This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it

This is a good place,” he said. “There’s a lot of liquor,” I agreed.

A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.

Oh, darling, you will be good to me, won’t you? Because we’re going to have a strange life.

You know I don’t love any one but you. You shouldn’t mind because some one else loved me.

Listen,” I told him. “Don’t be so tough so early in the morning. I’m sure you’ve cut plenty of people’s throats. I haven’t even had my coffee yet.

If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.

Do you suffer when you write? I don’t at all. Suffer like a bastard when don’t write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing.

We are all broken—that’s how the light gets in.

We’re stronger in the places that we’ve been broken.

You’ve such a lovely temperature.

Everyone behaves badly–given the chance.

The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.

Going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

It’s silly not to hope. It’s a sin he thought.

You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

Most people were heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after it has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too.

The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.

I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you always but I never saw you before.

He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.

I’m not unfaithful, darling. I’ve plenty of faults but I’m very faithful. You’ll be sick of me I’ll be so faithful.

I may not be as stong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution.

Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?

No one you love is ever truly lost.

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with that there is

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?

How did you go bankrupt?” Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

Why, darling, I don’t live at all when I’m not with you.

I am always in love.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.

Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so.

After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.

Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?

When you start to live outside yourself, it’s all dangerous.

Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.

We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.

We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

I didn’t want to kiss you goodbye — that was the trouble — I wanted to kiss you good night — and there’s a lot of difference.

Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry: Worry never fixes anything.

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.

You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.

It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.

If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

Isn’t it pretty to think so.

But life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve nothing to lose.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

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.

The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.

In order to write about life first you must live it.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

Write hard and clear about what hurts.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

And you’ll always love me won’t you? Yes And the rain won’t make any difference? No

Never to go on trips with anyone you do not love.

I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.

There’s no one thing that’s true. It’s all true.

I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.

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 drink to make other people more interesting.

The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

The first draft of anything is shit.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?

There is no friend as loyal as a book.