James Purdy

“All you need do, Bernie,”she gulped her toast soaked in coffee, “is present the truth as fiction.”

“Never deprecate another person's sufferings even when imaginary.”

“But failure has kept Curt at home like a nice warm dachshund.”

“My idea of heaven is to be hunting with you in some beautiful park with mountains like here at home but where we won’t need guns or prey but we will just walk together arm in arm in this good world and be by ourselves always together forever and a day.”

“The last human of importance the American people have been able to keep in the working end of their brain is your own Chicago triggerman, Dillinger. After him they kind of lost hold on keeping who’s who straight. So don’t be surprised if they don’t remember who Cabot Wright is, or if they do.”

“If the book’s bad enough, they’ll publish it, and if it’s bad bad enough, the daily reviewers will love it, and it’ll sell.”

“There was the cruel kind of Eustace silence.”

“Nobody can cause another man evil unless the second party involved allows him to.”