"He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge."

"I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go."

"I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready."

"What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?"

"They are so rigid,' he said in a sudden angry voice. 'Why do they not see that this rigidity turns away our greatest minds?"

"Do you know what I don't understand about that ball game? I don't understand why I wanted to kill you."

"> Why does everything that lives have to die? < So life would be precious, Asher. Something that is yours forever, is never precious."

"Did he really believe God wrote stories that were open to one explanation only? A story that knew but one explanation could hardly be interesting and was certainly not worth the trouble of remembering."

"These observations tie in directly with the whole question of organizing. Why do we have leaders? We put some people out in the fields and all of a sudden they hit, they click. Everyone's happy with them and they begin to move mountains. With other people there are problems and heartaches. They just don't go. When we look and see what's happening, almost invariably the differences are along the lines of willingness to sacrifice and work long hours."

"Who gets the risks? The risks are given to the consumer, the unsuspecting consumer and the poor work force. And who gets the benefits? The benefits are only for the corporations, for the money makers."

"What I do shows people what kind of person I am."

"Our union represents a breaking away...represents sharing a power, represent questioning, represents a new force...however long it takes, we are geared for a struggle."

"I have no physical courage, I've asked for a double."

"They start at the wrong end of love. They begin at the climax. Can you wonder why it is so miserable?"

"It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house."

"Why did he go onward? Why did he not rest here upon the bottom of utmost humiliation and for a while take his content? But he went onward."

"We wander, question. But the answer waits in each separate heart - the answer of our own identity and the way by which we can master loneliness and feel that at last we belong."

"I do not have any home. So why should I be homesick?"

"Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet."

"Who can direct when all pretend to know?"

"We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!"

"What is the cheapest to you now is likely to be the dearest to you in the end."

"Asking 'who ought to be the boss' is like asking 'who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?' Obviously, the man who can sing tenor."

"In every interview I have ever read or seen or taken part in, the final question in our future-oriented society is always, What next?"