If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did. - J. D. Salinger

If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more.

If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean, you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you're talking about don't leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there, but just because they do, just because they know how to leave something, it doesn't have to be a poem for heaven's sake. It may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings — excuse the expression. Like Manlius and Esposito and all those poor men.

If you weren't around, I'd probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some goddamn place. You're the only reason I'm around, practically.