I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.
Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.
There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.
I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.
All great and precious things are lonely.
I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.
It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.
And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.
All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.
Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.
I guess there are never enough books.
There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.
When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people.
To be alive at all is to have scars.
Anything that just costs money is cheap.
My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.
Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.
No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.
As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.
People like you to be something, preferably what they are.
Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.
I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it.
If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
Don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.
It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.
Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?
People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.
But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.
A guy needs somebody―to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.
It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.
An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.
A man without words is a man without thought.
When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.
You know how advice is - you only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyways.
Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.
Don't make everyone know about your sadness.
I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.
Perhaps it takes courage to raise children..
You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff
It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.
You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.
I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.
How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?
..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.
I guess I'm trying to say, Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.
No one who is young is ever going to be old.
The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we.
We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.
A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus' works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain't hardly ever a nice fella.
Intention, good or bad, is not enough.
Maybe-- maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-- never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself?
And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.
He never fell, never slipped back, never flew.
His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.
Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.
If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.
Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.
I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
Trouble with mice is you always kill 'em.
So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.
Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.
Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.
I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.
Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.
There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.
We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent.
Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world.
It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.
What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.
I think I love you, Cal." -Abra I'm not good." -Cal Because you're not good." -Abra
I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it.
Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.
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They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)
Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.
There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.
I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.
I'll want to hear,' Samuel said. 'I eat stories like grapes.
Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.
It is the hour of pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.
But you must give him some sign, some sign that you love him... or he'll never be a man. All his life he'll feel guilty and alone unless you release him.
The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.
And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.
Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.
Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.
For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.
We know what we got, and we don't care whether you know it or not.
No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.
We could live offa the fatta the lan'.
