—Kingsley Amis, on a hangover, Lucky Jim
If you keep drinking your babies will come out crosseyed, and you’ll end up buried in a strange town with your name spelled wrong on your grave.
—Denis Johnson, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
Lead me not into Penn Station.
—Saul Bellow, Herzog
Penn Station, a place so filthy, confused, and depressing that even the pimps and whores can’t stand it.
—Robert Hughes, The Spectacle of Skill
One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.
—Vincent Scully, on old versus new Penn Station
When you played there you sounded like the Knicks.
—Gil Scott-Heron, on Madison Square Garden, The Last Holiday
How thrilling it would be, if only one couldn’t read!
—G. K. Chesterton, on Times Square
And you, stand-up lady, are golden as the sun.
—Norman Mailer, letter to Norris Church Mailer
Why had I been so consumed by this old, fat, bombastic, lying little dynamo?
—Norris Church Mailer, on Norman Mailer, A Ticket to the Circus
Say, who among us does not care to be undressed?
—August Kleinzahler, “The Dog Stoltz”
Prithee, undo this button.
—Lord Byron, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Pluck me whilst I blush!
—James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
There’s no nature in New York and the closest you can get is an orgasm.
—Jim Harrison, The Beast God Forgot to Invent
Integrity is the orgasm.
—Doris Lessing
Many men wanted to lay me down. But few wanted to pick me up.
—Eartha Kitt
I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
—Dame Rebecca West
What I wanted … was everything.
—Eve Babitz, Eve’s Hollywood
William Faulkner walks into a bar.
Bartender: Why the long phrase?
—Overheard
He sharpens my zest for writing, that man.
—Iris Murdoch, on Faulkner, Living on Paper
There’s that line that Faulkner said, about how you don’t love because. You love despite.
—Meg Wolitzer, The Female Persuasion
One Willyam ass goddam Faulkner, peckerwood, whom I repeat rigoureusement, watch, can write his old Mississippi peckerwood ass off.
—Albert Murray, South to a Very Old Place
I will call a turd a turd and our boy is pretty full these days.
—Ralph Ellison to Albert Murray, on Faulkner, Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray
It is the destiny of mint to be crushed.
—Waverley Root
If dolphins tasted good, he said, we wouldn’t even know about their language.
—Lorrie Moore, Bark
That pale porpoise and his plush vulgarities.
—Vladimir Nabokov, on Henry James
Why do sole and turbot borrow the colors and even the contours of the sea bottom? Out of self-protection? No, out of self-disgust.
—Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave
Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die.
—François Truffaut
After four movies, three concerts, and two-and-a-half museums, you sleep with him. It seems the right number of cultural events.
—Lorrie Moore, “How to Be an Other Woman”
I don’t like the feeling that I know men who go to shows in the afternoon. It’s worse than smoking reefers.
—Harold Ross, Letters from the Editor
I am a whole theater unto myself.
—Mary Ellen Pleasant, in Pandex of the Press
Happiness is a monstrosity; they who seek it are punished.
—Gustave Flaubert, The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830–1857
Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hardshelled, firmly closed.
—Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye
Old southern graveyards harbor an unwholesome power comparable to that of nuclear disaster sites.
—Denis Johnson, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
Jesus, the South is fine, isn’t it. It’s better than the theatre, isn’t it. It’s better than Ben Hur, isn’t it.
—William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom
Only the music got away clean.
—Greil Marcus, on Southern culture, Mystery Train
A lot of people leave Arkansas and most of them come back sooner or later. They can’t quite achieve escape velocity.
—Charles Portis, Dog of the South
Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.
—Dylan Thomas
—Louise Brooks
You can be bored with anything if you try hard enough.
—Samuel R. Delany, Nova
Proust, James, Voltaire, Donne, Lucretius—how we would have bored them!
—Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave
If it were read in the open air, birds would fall stunned from the sky.
—Clive James, on the boredom of Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs
I jerked off
driving home alone one-handed.
—John Updike, “Midpoint”
It’s done with a flick of the wrist.
—Bob Dylan, “Sweetheart Like You”
Foreskins come and foreskins go! But Mozart lasts forever!
—Ali Smith, Autumn
Print a famous foreskin and the world will beat a path to your door.
—Jann Wenner, on publishing a naked photo of John Lennon in Rolling Stone
The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
—Donald Barthelme, “On Angels”
Who needed God? We had our bodies, bread,
And glasses of raw, green, local wine.
—Mark Jarman, “Unholy Sonnet 13”
Did you also sacrifice a goat?
—Daniel Dennett, to someone who said he was praying for him
If God really wanted to show off his work, he’d be a DJ.
—Charles Taylor, Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In near You
It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we’re talking about when we talk about love.
—Raymond Carver, Where I’m Calling From
I barely knew I had skin before I met you.
—Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests
Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.
—Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals
Charlene kissed convulsively, as if she had just swallowed a golf ball and was trying to force it back up.
—Larry McMurtry, The Last Picture Show
They kissed as if they were sipping crème de menthe through a straw.
—A. J. Liebling, quoting a friend on society women, Between Meals
All my life I have been hoping that someone will compare me to crème de menthe, which is indeed the most refreshing of drinks.
—Auberon Waugh, The Diaries of Auberon Waugh
The locomotive coughed, spat, sneezed, and departed.
—Alexandre Dumas, “Mustard”
I would like to visit the factory that makes train horns, and ask them how they are able to arrive at that chord of eternal mournfulness.
—Nicholson Baker, A Box of Matches
What did people have nightmares about before there were trains?
—Iris Murdoch, Under the Net
Live every minute as if you are late for the last train.
—Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
People’s backyards are much more interesting than their front gardens, and houses that back on to rai
lways are public benefactors.
—John Betjeman
Henry got around.
I can’t say it improved him
but unquestionably it gave him some to think about.
—John Berryman, “Dream Song 349”
We can’t stop here. This is bat country!
—Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I would rather fight a lion than be put in a roomful of bats.
—Oscar Zeta Acosta, The Uncollected Works
It’s ill guessing what the bats are flying after.
—George Eliot, Adam Bede
Despair’s a sweet meat I’d hang a fang in.
—Charles Wright, “The Appalachian Book of the Dead II”
The worst [animal to eat] was a mole—that was utterly horrible.
—Augustus J. C. Hare, The Story of My Life
Let things taste of what they are.
—Alice Waters, The Art of Simple Food
If I see any more handcrafts I’ll go mad!
—Elizabeth Bishop, Paris Review interview
All forms of needlework of the fancy order are inventions of the evil one.
—Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth and Her German Garden
Even the swap meets around here are getting pretty corrupt.
—Bob Dylan and Sam Shepard, “Brownsville Girl”
Few people alive at the time were more delightful, more ingenious, more movingly lovely, and, as it might happen, more savage, than the girls of slender means.
—Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means
I was always desired. But now I am valued. And that is a different thing, I find.
—Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Whatever is on the outside can be taken away at any time. Only what is inside you is safe.
—Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
I was supposed to have a script, and had mislaid it. I was supposed to hear cues, and no longer did.
—Joan Didion, The White Album
We talked filth for a pleasant half hour.
—William Boyd, Any Human Heart
Expletive Delighted!
—Fairport Convention, album title
Do you appreciate that an oyster has, among its other organs, a heart?
—Padgett Powell, The Interrogative Mood
The best was Olivia the Oyster Dancer who would place a raw oyster on her forehead and lean back and shimmy it down all over her body without ever dropping it … Then she would kick it high into the air and would catch it on her forehead and begin again.
—Michael Ondaatje, Coming Through Slaughter
Cooling himself with an oyster.
—Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz
Hang around the barbershop long enough, she said, and you’ll end up with a haircut.
—Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room
Our hair may look stylish now,
but in the photograph it always turns against us.
—Lucia Perillo, “300D”
Charm is not a hairstyle … The more you try to be fashionable, the tackier you’ll look.
—Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation
I read Gibbon when I curled my hair at night.
—Emily Shore, diary
Pull down thy vanity,
I say pull down.
—Erza Pound, “Canto LXXXI”
See? You set your little poosy over this spray, get the water going like this, and presto! You have a nice, clean little twattie.
—Berenice Abbott, on bidets
Dipping his ass like doughnuts in tea.
—Robert Coover, on a bidet, Going Out for a Beer
Luxury hotels are the real houses of God.
—Peter Cameron, Andorra
My hotel was not the best in town and my room was not the best in the hotel.
—Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
There should have been a pair of signs out front, flashing back and forth: NOT QUITE A DUMP AT DUMP PRICES.
—Charles Portis, “Motel Life, Lower Reaches”
—Do you have a reservation? she says.
—I have severe ones, he says, but I do need a room.
—Kevin Barry, Beatlebone
Honk if you wish all difficult poems were profound.
—Ben Lerner, The Lichtenburg Figures
It’s just a poem, not a platter of brains.
—Chelsey Minnis, “Greatness”
I’m a freak user of words, not a poet.
—Dylan Thomas, The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas
It’s unbelievable what they say about poetry. There must be a stable of morons somewhere kept exclusively for this purpose.
—Howard Moss, to Elizabeth Bishop
I’ve had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.
—Kenneth Rexroth
My own prescription for making poetry popular in the schools would be to ban it—with possession treated as a serious misdemeanor, and dealing as a felony.
—Clive James
A codpiece that hath no poem in it is a foolish codpiece.
—Edward St. Aubyn, Lost for Words
When you’ve been made to feel bad for so long, you jump at the chance to do it to others.
—ZZ Packer, “Brownies”
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
—W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”
All right, then I will go to hell.
—Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I’m bad and I’m going to hell, and I don’t care. I’d rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.
—William Faulkner
People who die bad don’t stay in the ground.
—Toni Morrison, Beloved
The devil’s motorcycle never breaks down.
—Mischa Berlinski, Peacekeeping
My head is bald, my breath is bad,
Unshaven is my chin.
—John Betjeman, “Late-Flowering Lust”
Her body’s no longer tender,
but her mind is free.
—Rita Dove, “Obedience”
Give us a touch, Poldy.
—James Joyce, Ulysses
Yoda looks like a wonton and talks like a fortune cookie.
—Pauline Kael, For Keeps
Totally unoriginal, feebly plotted, instantly forgettable.
—J. G. Ballard, on Star Wars
The early bird who gets the worm works for somebody who comes in late and owns the worm farm.
—John D. MacDonald, The Dreadful Lemon Sky
The less important you are in an office, the more they expect the happy smile.
—Don DeLillo, Libra
We tried not to smile, for smiling only encourages men to bore you and waste your time.
—Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be?
Do I have to stare into his eyes
and sympathize? If I want my job
I do.
—Deborah Garrison, “Please Fire Me”
Thousands upon thousands of people who I believe are like me are those who have never found the professional skin to fit the riot in their souls.
—Seymour Krim, What’s This Cat’s Story
Listen, here’s what I’d like to do: I’d like to live in a trailer and play records all night.
—Charles Portis, Norwood
My Old Kentucky Home and Casey Jones,
Some Sunny Day. I heard a road-gang chanting so.
—Hart Crane, “The River”
Men and women have been living and dying for a long time, and some of them have left records.
—Michael Robbins, Equipment for Living
Hail, hail rock ’n’ roll
Deliver me from the days of old.
—Chuck Berry, “School Days”
It ha
s been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it’s not, it’s a visa, and it runs out fast.
—Julie Burchill
It is the journey from ingénue to engineer, and the clock is always on.
—Rupert Everett, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins
The male version of the wax is officially called a sunga, which is the name for the Brazilian boys’ bikini. I regret to inform you that the colloquial term for the business is “sack, back, and crack.”
—Christopher Hitchens, And Yet
Thank god my looks are improving, but am I getting more radical?
—Auberon Waugh, The Diaries of Auberon Waugh
You have to eat eggs on the road.
—Norman Mailer, on author tours, in Mentor by Tom Grimes
My life was the best omelet you could make with a chainsaw.
—Thomas McGuane, attributed
It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.
—Dorothy Parker
Wanda Jackson sounded like she could fry eggs on her mons veneris.
—Nick Tosches, Unsung Heroes of Rock ’n’ Roll
Two eggs,
over queasy.
—Kevin Young, “Stills”
Just give me my potato, any kind of potato, and I’m happy.
—Dolly Parton, in The New York Times
Words that are horrible to one writer may not be horrible to another, but if you are a writer for whom no words are terrible, you would do well to take up some other activity.
—The Economist Style Guide
The reader can sense whether a word is borrowed or it belongs to you.
—Michael Hofmann, Paris Review interview
Be suspicious of any word you learned
and were proud of learning.
It will go bad.
It will fall off the page.
—Miller Williams, “Let Me Tell You”
Should there be a breathalyzer lock on the nuclear football? A brain scan?
—Ron Rosenbaum, How the End Begins
Two white guys standing next to a swimming pool full of gasoline arguing over who’s got more matches.
—Stokely Carmichael, on the arms race
Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
You know, I’d like to have a secret lab like that myself.
—William Eggleston, on Los Alamos
If you want to say something radical, you should dress conservative.
—Steve Biko, attributed
If people turn to look at you on the street, you are not well dressed.
—Beau Brummell
True elegance is a real time suck, and flair misfires worse than being dull.
—Tina Brown, The Vanity Fair Diaries