Ham On Rye Quotes
"The first thing I remember is being under something."
"Nobody seemed to know that I was there."
"The first thing I remember my grandmother saying was, 'I will bury all of you!'"
"That boy, when I tried to pick him up out of the cradle to kiss him, he reached up and hit me in the nose!"
"It was like chips of ice striking against one another."
"Then there was sunlight upon the rug and on the legs of the people."
"My spoon was bent so that if I wanted to eat I had to pick the spoon up with my right hand."
"I liked the sound of the keys best up at one end of the piano."
"Then there is nothing…then a Christmas tree."
"People were fools. It was going to be easy for me."
"There was a woman sitting with her skirt bunched back underneath her. She didn’t have any panties on, and looking up between the planks you could see her cunt."
"He’s going to be uncluttered by old histories, old mores, old dead and useless dreams…"
"The sun came through the window and poured in on those legs and thighs, the sun played on that warm silk pulled so tightly."
"The girls stayed after school and watched us."
"I got some beatings from my father for running off with Frank but I figured I was going to get the beatings anyhow so I might as well have the fun."
"That there must be a way to kill him. In a couple of years I could beat him to death."
"What’s so nice about laying in bed all day? I don’t have to see anybody."
"I make charts of airplanes going overhead."
"They experimented on the poor and if that worked they used the treatment on the rich."
"I decided that everything that they were doing for me was useless."
"I figured that at best the needle would leave scars on me for the remainder of my life."
"No wonder people stared, no wonder they said unkind things."
"It was not simply a case of teen-age acne. These were inflamed, relentless, large, swollen boils filled with pus."
"I felt singled out, as if I had been selected to be this way."
"I sneaked a look at her. Her face was round, she wasn’t very pretty but she wore her nurse’s cap in a perky manner and she had large dark brown eyes."
"Despite the horror of the blood and the pus, she was always humane and kind."
"I just wished that she would enfold me in her starched whiteness and that together we could vanish forever from the world."
"Nobody had any idea of what had happened to me."
"Humans didn’t have it, whatever it took."
"It was a place I had passed many times before but had never stopped to examine."
"I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn’t have to do anything."
"You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by."
"A man needed somebody. There wasn’t anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be."
"I was like a turd that drew flies instead of like a flower that butterflies and bees desired."
"As I watched them I said to myself, someday my dance will begin. When that day comes I will have something that they don’t have."
"Someday I will be as happy as any of you, you will see."
"They were soft, they had never faced any fire. They were beautiful nothings."
"No wonder I had been depressed all my life. I wasn’t getting proper nourishment."
"Stick close to your desks and never go to sea and you’ll always be the ruler of the Queen’s Navy."
"All wars have been fought for a so-called good Cause on both sides. But only the victor’s Cause becomes history’s Noble Cause."
"Never bring a lot of money to where a poor man lives. He can only lose what little he has."
"If you cause any more disturbance I will phone the Los Angeles Police Department."
"Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing."
"I will do anything honest or otherwise."
"I don’t like to get up early in the morning and I don’t like to take orders."
"I don’t know. When I get down to my last dime I’ll just walk over to skid row."
"You still want to be a writer? - Sure. How about you? - Yeah, but it’s pretty hopeless."
"This is 1940. They’re still publishing 19th Century stuff, heavy, labored, pretentious."
"I’m going to break through. You’ll see my books on the library shelves one day."
"God damn Thomas Wolfe! He sounds like an old woman on the telephone!"
"Without drink I would have long ago cut my god-damned throat."
"What are you talking about? That’s what writers do!"
"I’m a writer. - You don’t look like a writer. - What do they look like?"
"As long as a man had wine and cigarettes he could make it."
"You can’t overestimate the stupidity of the general public."
"I wasn’t interested in world history, only my own."
"War presidents got more power and, later, more pages."
"I had always been good company for myself."
"Sex and drink, and maybe love, was all they had."
"We were all in one big shit pot together. There was no escape."
"I wasn’t a misanthrope and I wasn’t a misogynist but I liked being alone."
"I’m already tired. - We’re going to get drawn into the war, one way or the other."
"How are ya gonna make it? - Seems like I’ve heard that question all my life."
"Becker, there’s always something to write about."
"I’m going to try everything! War, women, travel, marriage, children, the works."
"Someday I’m going to write all this down. I’ll be on the library shelves."
"We were all in it together. We were all in one big shit pot together. There was no escape. We were all going to be flushed away."