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When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or c...more

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Prose is architecture and the Baroque age is over.

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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.

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We only knew then that there was always the war, but that we were not going to it anymore.

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For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for somethin...more

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Good. Coffee is good for you. It's the caffeine in it. Caffeine, we are here. Caffeine puts a man on her horse and a woman in his grave.

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I do not think I have ever seen a nastier-looking man... Under the black hat, when I had first seen them, the eyes had been those of an unsuccessful r...more

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I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.

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He said we were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it. We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last countr...more

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

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That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off b...more

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In those days we did not trust anyone who had not been in the war, but we did notcompletely trust anyone.

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The people that I liked and had not met went to the big cafes because they were lost in them and no one noticed them and they could be alone in them a...more

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You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know

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For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit’s foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit’s foot long ago and the bones and...more