—Rupert Everett, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins
Old friends are almost indistinguishable from enemies.
—Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave
We hate old friends: we hate old books: we hate old opinions; and at last we come to hate ourselves.
—William Hazlitt
There is a time for loyalty and a time when loyalty comes to an end.
—Muriel Spark, A Good Comb
War is the truest form of divination.
—Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
What’s the line? War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.
—Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry
In the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe “Oh.”
—Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Alienation is when your country is at war, and you want the other side to win.
—Ramparts magazine headline, 1969
As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.
—George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn
This morning the sky was a ceiling of airplanes.
—Colette
There’s a time for reciting poems, and a time for fists.
—Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives
But, oh Viv, right doesn’t make might.
—Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need A BEER.
—Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book
He’s so dumb he thinks cunnilingus is an Irish airline.
—Arno Schmidt
Two and a half minutes of squelching.
—Johnny Rotten’s definition of sex
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
—Thomas Hardy, “The Convergence of the Twain”
An editor is a man who doesn’t know what he wants but recognizes it instantly.
—William E. Rae, attributed, in Terry McDonell’s The Accidental Life
If it’s the writer’s book, it’s the editor’s magazine.
—Robert Gottlieb, Avid Reader
Writers can handle fast rejection. But they cannot stand the slow no. Whenever I receive copy I feel there’s a time bomb in my bag.
—Tina Brown, The Vanity Fair Diaries
One who reads the script overnight.
—How David Hare judges a great agent or producer, in The Blue Touch Paper
When she was not the glacier, she was the narrow Alpine pass.
—Brendan Gill, on Katherine White’s editing, Here at The New Yorker
Ah, my friend, I sometimes think that I lead a highly dangerous life, since I’m one of those machines that can burst apart!
—Frederick Nietzsche
You would think by now we could just go poof.
—Lucia Perillo, “Time Will Clean the Carcass Bones”
The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun’s just started.
—John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich
Either forswear fucking others or the affair is over.
—First sentence of Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater
The plural of spouse is spice.
—Christopher Morley
If truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
For most people, [affairs] are the only creative adventures they’ll ever have.
—Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company
A scandal was after all a sort of service to the community.
—Saul Bellow, Herzog
If it were possible for a book to give a physical stink off its pages, this one would.
—George Orwell, on Dalí’s memoir, in “Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dalí”
The air smelled like disinfectant and something else that was meant to be killed by disinfectant.
—Denis Johnson, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
His colon was probably spastic. He was dyspeptic, fitful, an alimentary type. He often reeked of Maalox.
—Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker
If most of us abhor shit, it is because most of us are a little hideous inside.
—Norman Mailer, Cannibals and Christians
Where there is a stink of shit there is a smell of being.
—Antonin Artaud
The Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive.
—Frank O’Hara, “Steps”
Pirates could happen to anyone.
—Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Pandemonium! What a great thing football is, that it allows us at rare moments to be pandemonious.
—Roy Blount Jr., About Three Bricks Shy: And the Load Filled Up
Rooting is in our blood; we take sides as we take breaths.
—Janet Malcolm, Iphigenia in Forest Hills
Sports constitute a code, a language of the emotions, and a tourist who skips the stadiums will not recoup his losses at Lincoln Center and Grant’s Tomb.
—Wilfrid Sheed
Imagine Lou Gehrig with a beard! Jackie Robinson! Babe Ruth! Ted Williams!
—Donald Hall, A Carnival of Losses
Real American crazy shit. America amok! America amuck!
—Philip Roth, American Pastoral
Craziness, down through history, has performed impressively.
—John Updike, Bech Is Back
Justice?—You get justice in the next world; in this world you have the law.
—William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own
Evidently, to be a good trial lawyer you have to be a good hater. A lawsuit is to ordinary life what war is to peacetime.
—Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer
I don’t want to know what the law is, I want to know who the judge is.
—Roy Cohn
I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage it if there were enough tarragon around.
—James Beard
For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
—I wish my tattoos were gone, Jessica said …
—There is a way, said Lila. But it involves sex.
—Nicholson Baker, House of Holes
Fug you. Fug the goddam gun.
—Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
So you’re the young man who can’t spell fuck.
—Tallulah Bankhead, to Norman Mailer, attributed
Fik yew!
—James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Has he ever used the search term “teen”?
—Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted.
—T. S. Eliot, “Preludes”
I hate you, God, I hate You as though You existed.
—Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
He thought he was the son of God, he disliked his parents, was a prig [and] where was he, what was he doing, between the ages of twelve and twenty-nine?
—Cyril Connolly, on Jesus, in The Unquiet Grave
Sunday is the most segregated day of the week.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
It should be different from another day. People may walk; but not throw stones at birds.
—Samuel Johnson, on Sundays
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
—Maggie Smith, “Good Bones”
He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.
—Kingsley Amis, One Fat Englishman
Every man with a bellyful of the
classics is an enemy of the human race.
—Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
The thing about books is, there are quite a number you don’t have to read.
—Donald Barthelme
Anyone who’s read all of Proust plus The Man Without Qualities is bound to be missing out on a few other titles.
—Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs
I read assiduously. I kept up with my species.
—Leonard Michaels, Sylvia
The only thing left to people in their despair was reading.
—Michel Houellebecq, Submission
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.
—Julian Barnes, Through the Window
Nobody knows how to feel and they’re checking around for hints.
—Don DeLillo, Mao II
—How do you know all this?
—I’m a fucking librarian.
—Jenny Offill, Weather
I take note of the way people act when they’re around mirrors.
—Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird
I haven’t enjoyed a mirror since 1994.
—Kevin Barry, Night Boat to Tangier
Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
—Samuel Butler, Erewhon
When God gave us mirrors, he had no idea.
—My Morning Jacket, “Librarian”
I don’t want to look as if I have been piloting the Concorde without a windshield.
—Christopher Hitchens, on face-lifts, And Yet
—How old does she look after her facelift?
—A very old twelve.
—Noël Coward’s reply, attributed
The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get.
—Morrissey, song title
Blameless people are always the most exasperating.
—George Eliot, Middlemarch
Twitter is a simple service for smart people, Facebook is a smart service for simple people.
—Jonah Peretti
Oh, how I hated all of them. Through gritted teeth I pressed “like” on all their posts, pretty much without exception.
—Keith Gessen, A Terrible Country
Pellet of affection! Pellet of rage!
—Jenny Offill, Weather
Like. Like. Like! The babble of this subculture is drowning me!
—Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge
Intent of her phone, reading, tapping, frowning in the contemporary manner.
—Ian McEwan, The Children Act
YouTube, my shame kiln.
—Wayne Koestenbaum, Humiliation
Five hundred million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore.
—Zadie Smith, on Facebook, “Generation Why?”
Just me and my id, hanging out, clicking.
—Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley
A dozen to begin with. After that, we’ll see.
—Colette, on being overcome by the scent of a passing plate of shrimp, Claudine in Paris
I shall be but a shrimp of an author.
—Thomas Gray
One of the best ways of annoying a prawn is simply to put it in the middle of a room and laugh at it.
—Auberon Waugh, The Diaries of Auberon Waugh
When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.
—Czesław Miłosz
He was one of those people who can chew their grievances like a cud.
—George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
I must express some relief that her memoirs did not proceed to me.
—Elizabeth Hardwick, on Mary McCarthy, The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick
Telling funny stories about your friends is a tricky business if you intend to go on having friends.
—Mary-Kay Wilmers, Human Relations and Other Difficulties
I am the nemesis of the would-be forgotten.
—Saul Bellow, Herzog
I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.
—Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
He liked subtle scenery, not the brass bands of it.
—Kenneth Clark
Just as a bank won’t lend you money unless you are too rich to need it, exercise is a pastime only for those who are already slender and physically fit.
—Christopher Hitchens, And Yet
People looked after their cars better than they looked after their bodies.
—Rachel Cusk, Kudos
Improves one’s posture but not one’s tranquillity.
—Angela Carter, on yoga
A few weeks without my trainer dragging me out of bed at six, a few forgotten visits to Louis Licari, in two months I would be a big girl in thick glasses with a bushy ponytail. How lovely that sounds.
—Tina Brown, The Vanity Fair Diaries
Doc, all my life people say I was ugly. Makes me feel mean.
—Boris Karloff, in The Raven
Her face was as useless to her as hot stew.
—Diane Williams, The Collected Stories of Diane Williams
Why does your face resemble the underside of a colander in which wet lettuce is heaped?
—John Updike, Bech: A Book
Desire makes us ugly unless the other person is lost to it too.
—Dana Spiotta, Innocents and Others
As ugly as you is, the trees leanin over away from you.
—Henry Dumas, “Double Nigger”
I’m the fortieth-ugliest man in this bar.
—Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story
Sugar, I know I’m a funny lookin’ fella. Wooo, but if I clean up won’t you have a little pity on me?
—Lightnin’ Hopkins, “Big Black Cadillac Blues”
They eat green salad and drink human blood.
—Saul Bellow, on women, Herzog
I don’t like the way he writes about women, and I don’t like the way I sound complaining about it.
—Nell Freudenberger, on Philip Roth
—Kate, you’ve never read my books. They’re all about women.
—Yes, she said, but coldly observed. As if extraterrestrial life.
—John Updike, Bech: A Book
The dawn of space travel is the dawn of woman.
—Samuel R. Delany, Stars in My Pockets Like Grains of Sand
Even in space there’s a double standard for women.
—Carrie Fisher
I’m sorry that astronaut will be brought back from her own chosen heaven.
—Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
Nothing ill come near thee!
—William Shakespeare, Cymbeline
The ideal way to get rid of any infectious disease would be to shoot instantly every person who comes down with it.
—H. L. Mencken
Meanwhile a deer tick slides into the very last reserved parking spot.
—Michael Dickman, “Lakes Rivers Streams”
How many ticks are on this wood?
—Frederick Nietszche, The Joyous Science
Before Instagram it was so much harder to figure out exactly how much money people have.
—Emily Gould, on Twitter
My hair almost stands on end when I remember the debts I have gotten into.
—Anton Chekhov, A Life in Letters
I don’t know what happened about the money but I’m most awfully sorry.
—Jean Rhys, The Letters of Jean Rhys
People were paying with bills they’d made by tearing a corner off a twenty and pasting it onto a one.
—Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son
Algebra and money are essentially levelers, the first intellectually, the second effectively.
—Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
Money is sad shit.
—Richard Brautigan, The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writing
I like the social tradition that we must not poke a fire in a friend’s drawing-room
unless our friendship dates back full seven years.
—Max Beerbohm, The Prince of Minor Writers
When he planned to visit a friend in an apartment building new to him, he went so far as to secure blueprints of the building and ascertain the position of its fire escapes.
—Brendan Gill, on the cartoonist Alan Dunn, who feared fire, Here at The New Yorker
Each one of us will trail a sinuous hose. It will not be filled with water. It will be filled with oil.
—Max Beerbohm, on his dream fire department, The Prince of Minor Writers
When he bought a cornet he’d shine it up and make it glisten like a woman’s leg.
—Michael Ondaatje, Coming Through Slaughter
Yes, that “unmistakable” Laurel Canyon sound. The sound of Laurel Canyon is entertainment lawyers screaming at their dogs.
—Father John Misty
Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards.
—Mary Karr
I don’t want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.
—Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has.
—Anita Brookner, A Misalliance
Freedom isn’t speaking your mind freely. Freedom is having the money to go to Mexico.
—Nell Zink, Mislaid
Rock and roll means well, but it can’t help telling young boys lies.
—The Drive-By Truckers, “Marry Me”
Don’t you think women would be happier if “Layla” had a whole chorus about Eric Clapton watching Patti Boyd trying to climb over a park fence, pissed, in order to retrieve a shoe she threw in there for a bet?
—Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman
Normally in the presence of lack of greatness, I would focus on the bassist’s arms.
—Rebecca Schiff, The Bed Moved
The word “semiotics” was always a tip-off: head for the hills!
—Clive James, Latest Readings
If he’s so clever, why doesn’t he write a novel of his own?
—Angela Carter, on Jacques Derrida
The plywood of Academe.
—Gore Vidal, “Ford’s Way”
He has a certain syrup but it does not pour.
—Gertrude Stein, on Glenway Wescott
I wanted to take that cat to a hot pan and sear its foul backside in an explosion of oil.
—Claire-Louise Bennett, Pond
I know about dogs; but how, pray, does one kick a cat’s ass?
—Ralph Ellison, to Saul Bellow, The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison
Zigzagging after cats and that.
—Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
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