William Kennedy

Love, is always insufficient, always a lie. Love, you are the clean shit of my soul. Stupid love, silly love.

Well-lit streets discourage sin, but don't overdo it.

Roscoe was spiritually illegal, a bootlegger of the soul, a mythic creature made of words and wit and wild deeds and boundless memory.

But after awhile you stand up, wipe the frost out of your ear, go someplace to get warm, bum a nickel for coffee, and then start walkin' toward somewheres else that ain't near no bridge.

Let us, then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate.

But fear is a cheap emotion, however full of wisdom. And, emotionally speaking, I've always thought of myself as a man of expensive taste.

It's quite uncanny what one sets in motion by being oneself.

Do something new and you are new. How boring it is not to fire machine guns.