Every time he played a note he waved it goodbye. Sometimes he didn’t even wave.
—Geoff Dyer, on Chet Baker, But Beautiful
I tried and I failed …
And I feel like going home
—Charlie Rich, “Feel Like Going Home”
Let us reflect whether there be any living writer whose silence we would consider a literary disaster.
—Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave
If we did get a writer worth reading, should we know him when we saw him, so choked as we are with trash?
—George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Book publishing to me should be done by failed writers—editors who recognize the real thing when they see it.
—Robert Giroux, Paris Review interview
Books are, let’s face it, better than everything else.
—Nick Hornby, Ten Years in the Tub
Tax cuts … for the rich?
—Martin Amis, The Rub of Time
The criminals are in the Social Register.
—George Jackson, prison interview by Jessica Mitford
Everything legal, but sinful as hell.
—Denise Giardina, Storming Heaven
Revenge is the capitalism of the poor.
—Aravind Adiga, Selection Day
It makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears—dissolution, disappearance.
—Zadie Smith, White Teeth
The face of “evil” is always the face of total need.
—William S. Burroughs, preface to Naked Lunch
I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I haven’t been proud of, but the worst thing I ever did was getting as poor as I am now.
—Richard Brautigan, Dreaming of Babylon
In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.
—Edna O’Brien, The Love Object
Man-o-Manischewitz!
—Buzz Aldrin, upon landing on the moon
Whatever is the plural of Applebee’s?
—Roy Blount Jr., About Three Bricks Shy: And the Load Filled Up
I’m looking for my dignity. Don’t laugh.
—Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh
I’d rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
—Cato the Elder
Perhaps it would be a good idea for public statues to be made with disposable heads that can be changed with every change of popular fashion.
—Auberon Waugh, The Diaries of Auberon Waugh
I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions.
—Walt Whitman, “I Hear It Was Charged Against Me”
May I ask for a clearer definition of “subversive activity”?
—Chelsey Minnis, “Larceny”
A government that breaks its own laws can also easily break you.
—V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
Good-morning, Revolution: You’re the very best friend I ever had.
—Langston Hughes, “Good Morning Revolution”
The purpose of a writer is to make revolution irresistible.
—Toni Cade Bambara
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you know you’re going to scream … lay your head back, which spreads your vocal cords real wide, and when the scream comes out, it barely nicks your vocal cords.
—Advice from the bluesman Floyd Miles, in Gregg Allman’s My Cross to Bear
Let me personally give you a piece of advice. Never inhale your own vomit.
—William Kennedy, Ironweed
There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.
—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
A guy’s not really your boyfriend until he’s thrown up on you.
—Patti Smith
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?
—Bob Dylan, “Tombstone Blues”
Here we go … out of the sleep of the mild people, into the wild rippling water.
—James Dickey, Deliverance
Great tracts of the Pacific Northwest … resembled the interior landscape of manic depression.
—Jonathan Raban, Driving Home
The Adirondacks are the only part of the East that Western folk respect.
—Sigrid Nunez, Naked Sleeper
The night before, when I had walked in to the forest at midnight, that was what I really wanted to do.
—Deborah Levy, Things I Don’t Want to Know
We were to the woods more than once. You wanted what I wanted. It takes two to lie down, one on top of the other.
—Bernard Malamud, The Fixer
We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Something dies when I stroll around outside.
—Richard Ford
So this is America.
—Ted Hughes, upon sleeping with Sylvia Plath for the first time
I’ve come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.
—Don DeLillo, The Names
This country is so stupid. Only spoiled white people could let something so good get so bad.
—Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story
—For what purpose was the earth formed? asked Candide.
—To drive us mad, replied Martin.
—Voltaire, Candide
Air travel is like death: everything is taken from you.
—Elif Batuman, The Possessed
A picture-postcard is a symptom of loneliness.
—Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana
Put the coffee on, bubbles, I’m coming home.
—Richard Brautigan, Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork
White people couldn’t cook; everybody knew that. Which made it a puzzle why such an important part of the civil rights movement had to do with integrating restaurants and lunch counters.
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Colored People
You hear a lot of jazz about soul food. The people in the ghetto want steaks. Beef steaks. I wish I had the power to see to it that the bourgeoisie really did have to make it on soul food.
—Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice
Despite the succulent soul dinner, I did not have enough energy to masturbate.
—Charles Wright, Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.
—Flannery O’Connor, attributed
You cannot dismiss Miss O’Connor! You cannot dismiss Miss O’Connor!
—Harry Crews, lecturing at the University of Florida
It is sweet, sometimes, to hear clichés after long days of trying to say something new.
—Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy
Oh, I love clichés!
—Paul Muldoon, Paris Review interview
Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil.
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
That food was so bad I can’t wait for it to become a turd and leave me.
—Thomas McGuane, Cloudbursts
As casual as cow-dung.
—Richard Wilbur, “Two Voices in a Meadow”
What’s done is dung and cannot be undung.
—Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book Five
Enemy shit smells like the enemy.
—A. R. Ammons, “1: The Ridge Farm”
My desire is … that mine adversary had written a book.
—The Book of Job
The book of my enemy has been remaindered.
And I am pleased.
—Clive James, “The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered”
I fixed him so his unborn great-grandchildren will wet their pants on this anniversary and not know why.
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br /> —Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
It is my advice to anyone getting married, that they should first see the other partner when drunk.
—Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington
How dark is it legally permissible for a bar to be?
—Harold Ross, New Yorker story idea
Darkness is a real fountain of youth, isn’t it?
—Karen Russell, Orange World
It is always darkness before delight!
—Delmore Schwartz, “This Is a Poem I Wrote at Night, before the Dawn”
It was darker’n a carload of assholes.
—George V. Higgins, The Rat on Fire
Never write “balls” with an indelible pencil on the margins of the books provided.
—Evelyn Waugh
Language is balls coming at you from every angle.
—Alan Bennett, The Complete Talking Heads
She began to curl her hair and long for balls.
—Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Girls have balls. They’re just a little higher up.
—Joan Jett
George Washington had very large balls.
—Larry Kramer, The American People, Volume Two
I hear you … have finished a novel a hundred thousand words long consisting entirely of the word “balls” used in new groupings.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, letter to Ernest Hemingway, Collected Letters
When I come out on the stage they can hear my balls clank.
—John Barrymore, on playing Hamlet
Kick him in the balls before he kicks you in yours, growled our instructor.
—E. B. Sledge, With the Old Breed
Doesn’t this all sound balls? But it is not quite balls.
—Jean Rhys
Listen. If I wrote like that, I’d be you.
—Clive James, to an editor
Editors tend to be bad people.
—Roberto Bolaño, Between Parentheses
There is no editor whom I wouldn’t cheerfully fry in oil.
—Ezra Pound
Dear editor: It’s a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.
—Erle Stanley Gardner, attributed
He who cannot howl
Will not find his pack.
—Charles Simic, “Ax”
My bulldogs are adorable, with faces like toads that have been sat on.
—Colette, letter
Reekers, leakers, smilers and defilers.
—Ambrose Bierce, on dogs
You got a life? Live it! Live the motherfuckin life!
—Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
To hell with this moderation shit.
—Ai, “Boys and Girls, Lenny Bruce, or Back from the Dead”
If you can’t be funny, be interesting.
—Harold Ross, on writing
If you can’t be free, be a mystery.
—Rita Dove, “Canary”
If you can’t be kind at least be vague.
—Judith Martin
If you aren’t rich, you should always look useful.
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline
If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.
—Charlie Parker
If you’re not nervous, you’re not paying attention.
—Miles Davis
If wisdom’s silence then it’s time to play the fool.
—Chris Kraus, I Love Dick
If I can’t be an ugly rumor I won’t be the good time had by all.
—Bob Kaufman, “The Traveling Circus”
Motherfucking right, it’s confusing.
—Chester Himes, Blind Man with a Pistol
Heroin to me had a nice connotation … Jane Eyre, Becky Sharp, Tess.
—Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women
Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsciously crave a wee bit ay silence.
—Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
I gave him three reasons why there were no (or very few) Jewish junkies. Jews need eight hours of sleep. They must have fresh orange juice in the morning. They have to read the entire N. Y. Times.
—Bruce Jay Friedman, Lucky Bruce
I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender
into this world.
—Anne Sexton, “Rowing”
I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked.
—Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
I knew how words worked in the way that some boys knew how engines worked.
—Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
His body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop.
—Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Never trust a poet who can drive. Never trust a poet at the wheel. If he can drive, distrust the poems.
—Martin Amis, The Information
They had never known a woman who could swing her hips from side to side and clasp her hands to her breasts and pucker her mouth and know as much as they did about shock absorbers.
—David Plante, on Germaine Greer in a car garage, Difficult Women
The best mascot is a good mechanic.
—Amelia Earhart
They have strange license plates.
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “In Goya’s Greatest Scenes We Seem to See…”
I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.
—Nancy Mitford, Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford
I like children—fried.
—W. C. Fields
Bring them forth like children … even if they are ugly.
—Anne Sexton, on poems, A Self-Portrait in Letters
It made him fairly grimace, in private, to think that a child of his should be both ugly and overdressed.
—Henry James, Washington Square
I knew his voice was pure gold. I also knew that if anyone got a look at him he’d be dead inside of a week.
—Sam Phillips, attributed, on Roy Orbison
Ugly as death eating a dirty doughnut.
—Chuck Berry, The Autobiography
If I could live another forty years and spend the whole time reading, reading, reading, and learning how to write with talent … I would be able to blast everyone from such a big cannon that the heavens would tremble.
—Anton Chekhov, A Life in Letters
Go into any bookstore and try to breathe. You can’t. Too many words produced by people working every morning.
—John Updike, Bech Is Back
The printing press could disseminate, but it could not retrieve.
—Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers
Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form.
—Zadie Smith, Feel Free
If you believe that I’m a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut.
—Ice-T
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.
—D. H. Lawrence
The pitter-patter of a police helicopter overhead
Looking for you.
—Frederick Seidel, “The Ezra Pound Look-Alike”
Memory, the whole lying opera of it.
—Barry Hannah, Airships
My favorite ethnic group is smart.
—Dagoberto Gilb, interview
Intelligence is nothing without delight.
—Paul Claudel
You’ve made a blog … Clever boy! Next: flushing.
—Don Paterson, Best Thought, Worst Thought
The small birds twitter.
—William Wordsworth, “Written in March”
Twitter, said Manny, waving his hand. You know what that is? Termites with microphones.
—Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings
Distracted from distraction by distraction.
—T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
—Colette, attributed
On the towpath we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles … They should certainly be killed.
—Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Volume One, 1915–1919
There are more kinds of fools than one can guard against.
—Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
I’ve been waiting my whole life to fuck up like this.
—Robert Stone, Dog Soldiers
Sometimes a mindfuck was a satisfying and productive fuck after all.
—Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings
You are mine, I say to the twice-dunked cruller
before I eat it.
—Rita Dove, “Describe Yourself in Three Words or Less”
We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.
—David Mamet, Boston Marriage
I’m as pie as is possible.
—James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
The Grade A Crumpet came at him like kamikazes.
—Clive James, on Ford Madox Ford’s sex life
Very rarely guests would be considered “cake-worthy.”
—James Stourton, on Kenneth Clark
Why can’t I just eat my waffle?
—Barack Obama
A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
—Robertson Davies
Unless carefree, motherlove was a killer.
—Toni Morrison, Beloved
It was Diane’s view that bringing up a completely undamaged child was in bad taste.
—Rachel Cusk, Transit
I was being fucked up, at last, by choice.
—Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.
—Margaret Atwood, quoting another writer
No animal likes to be pecked on the anus by a duck.
—Nicholson Baker, A Box of Matches
There, but for a typographical error, is the story of my life.
—Dorothy Parker, on ducking for apples, in The Uncollected Dorothy Parker
One melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realization that you can’t make old friends.
—Christopher Hitchens, in Harper’s Magazine
What can you do with a friend? You can’t fuck him.
—William Carlos Williams
We don’t want to fuck each other and we don’t know each other well enough to have comfortable silences, so we have to talk.
—T. Gertler, Elbowing the Seducer
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
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