It should take you about four seconds to walk from here to the door. I'll give you two. - Truman Capote

"she wanted to know what American writers I liked. "Hawthorne, Henry James, Emily Dickinson…" "No, living." Ah, well, hmm, let's see: how difficult, the rival factor being what it is, for a contemporary author, or would-be author, to confess admiration for another. At last I said, "Not Hemingway — a really dishonest man, the closet-everything. Not Thomas Wolfe — all that purple upchuck; of course, he isn't living. Faulkner, sometimes: Light in August. Fitzgerald, sometimes: Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Tender Is the Night. I really like Willa Cather. Have you read My Mortal Enemy?" With no particular expression, she said, "Actually, I wrote it.

I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true.

The mean reds are horrible. You're afraid and you sweat like hell but you don't know what you're afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen only you don't know what it is.