Publishing is a very mysterious business. It is hard to predict what kind of sale or reception a book will have, and advertising seems to do very little good.
— Thomas Wolfe
A young man is so strong, so mad, so certain, and so lost. He has everything and he is able to use nothing.
Is this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you.
Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.
The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.
Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America - that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement.
You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.
Most of the time we think we're sick, it's all in the mind.
America - it is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.
Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.
In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying the darkness and we know no death.
Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.
All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.
Death the last voyage, the longest, and the best.
One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.
If a man has talent and can't use it, he's failed. If he uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he uses the whole of it, he has succeeded, and won a satisfaction and triumph few men ever know.
