People are obsessed by happiness, but there are a lot of other invigorating experiences available.

Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which psychoanalysis is powerless to bestow.

Unhappiness lies in that gap between our talents and our expectations.

A woman is supposed to have curves like an old Bentley, not like some old bike.

Self-pity is the most destructive of all narcotics.

I am not an intellectual. An intellectual is someone who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso, whereas I just say 'pass the mustard'.

People either hate me or dislike me - but I realized that people aren't against you, they are for themselves. We're all prejudiced in favor of ourselves.

The problem I've got is that I really, really like drugs. I love everything about them. It is horrific being sober all the time-utterly awful.

One of the many troubles of growing older is that it gets progressively harder to find a famous historical figure who hadn't yet amounted to anything by the time he was your age.

But really death seems the least awful thing that can happen to someone

To be worthy of assassination takes more than some crappy little book.

Art is a picture of the spirit.

When you can maintain continual awareness of where you are and hold onto the vision of where you want to go, you transform your life from wandering to wonder.

If I write as well as I golf, I'm in trouble!

Scarlett kicked the coverlet in impotent rage, trying to think of something bad enough to say.'God's nightgown!' she cried at last, and felt somewhat relieved.

You know, I don't feel fifty. I feel not a day over forty-nine. It's incredible. I'm bouncy, I feel bouncy.

Survey and test a prospective action before undertaking it. Before you proceed, step back and look at the big picture, lest you act rashly on raw impulse.

I tell people to start implementing when they are pretty sure there aren't more important stories out there. An iteration's worth of data is worth months of speculation.

Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when.

I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

It is always easy to begin a war, but very difficult to stop one.