When stuck, hit the road.

For your information, a good novel can change the world. Keep that in mind before you attempt to sit down at a typewriter. Never waste time on something you don't believe in yourself.

Almighty God, I am sorry I am now an atheist, but have You read Nietzsche?

If there is work there is warmth, that when a man has freedom of movement it is enough, for then his blood is hot too

Ask the dust on the road! Ask the Joshua trees standing alone where the Mojave begins. Ask them about Camilla Lopez, and they will whisper her name.

I felt his hot tears and the loneliness of man and the sweetness of all men and the aching haunting beauty of the living

Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town!

You are nobody, and I might have been somebody, and the road to each of us is love.

Arturo Bandini: -What does happiness mean to you Camilla? Camilla: -That you can fall in love with whoever you want to, and not feel ashamed of it.

Sick in my soul I tried to face the ordeal of seeking forgiveness. From whom? What God, what Christ? They were myths I once believed and now they were beliefs I felt were myths.

Look at the people who review. Look at their commitment to being "right" and "safe". If I had listened to my critics I would have given up years ago.

When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.

The events that occur in my life are workout situations. They are there for my benefit so I can become strong and gain wisdom and information by working my way through those situations.

You know because you’ve been it, and I know because I’m dead and it gives one such a wonderfully uncluttered perspective.

It is Halloween, ” he explains coyly. “I wanted to come out as something beautiful. None of this witch stuff for me. My God, don’t we spend our whole life as witches?

Nothing arouses ambition so much as the trumpet clang of another's fame.

Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.

People used to throw rocks at me for my clothes, now they wanna know where I buy them.

So, I'm not on a diet. I'm on a journey with Jesus to learn the fine art of self-discipline for the purpose of holiness.

Thou fool, what is sleep but the image of death? Fate will give an eternal rest. [Lat., Stulte, quid est somnus, gelidae nisi mortis imago? Longa quiescendi tempora fata dabunt.]

I read Carver. Julio Cortázar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like me.