A biography for Don Marquishasn’t been written yet.
“I have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast of ancestors. I would rather start a family than finish one. Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.”
“Of middle age the best that can be said is that a middle-aged person has likely learned how to have a little fun in spite of his troubles.”
“Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.”
“Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue.”
“There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.”
“Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes.”
“An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.”
“Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into.”
“If a child shows himself to be incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate his kind.”
“The trouble with the public is that there is too much of it; what we need in public is less quantity and more quality.”
“Bores bore each other too; but it never seems to teach them anything.”
“Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.”
“A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.”
“Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.”
“It takes all sorts of people to make the underworld.”
“i have had my ups and downsbut wotthehell wotthehellyesterday sceptres and crownsfried oysters and velvet gownsand today i herd with bumsbut wotthehell wotthehelli wake the world from sleepas i caper and sing and leapwhen i sing my wild free tunewotthehell wotthehellunder the blear eyed mooni am pelted with cast off shoonbut wotthehell wotthehell”
“it wont be long now it wont be longman is making deserts of the earthit wont be long nowbefore man will have used it upso that nothing but antsand centipedes and scorpionscan find a living on it....what man calls civilizationalways results in deserts....men talk of money and industryof hard times and recoveriesof finance and economicsbut the ants wait and the scorpions waitfor while men talk they are making deserts all the timegetting the world ready for the conquering antdrought and erosion and desertbecause men cannot learn....it wont be long now it wont be longtill earth is barren as the moonand sapless as a mumbled bone”
“There is nothing so habit-forming as money.”
“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.”
“Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.”