26 quotes
In the food department, practically nothing remains constant except catsup.
Nothing Works and Nobody Cares (1965)
A man can build a staunch reputation for honesty by admitting he was in error, especially when he gets caught at it.
Time just seems to fly away for a boy. That, I s’pose, is why one day you wake up suddenly and you ain’t a boy any longer.
The Old Man and the Boy (1957)
Bread is aerated sawdust, painted ghostly white. It owns all the nutriment of a breath of its principal ingredient, air.
Nothing Works and Nobody Cares (1965)
Restaurants? You stumble by accident, in search of a beer and а sammidge, into some dive and run onto the damnedest cuisine since the first cannibal discovered a recipe for braised missionary.
Nothing Works and Nobody Cares (1965)
At least if you can laugh instead of cry the troubles will either kill you or go away, and it is a bit better to die laughing than to die crying.
The Old Man's Boy Grows Older (1957)
I have visited friends—reasonably affluent, and of dissimilar sexes—in what the real-estate racket calls "luxury housing," and have fled in horrified relief to a goathide tent in Timbuktu.
Nothing Works and Nobody Cares (1965)
I acquired a castle in Spain. The rain in Spain falls mainly on my brain, because the roof is porous.
Nothing Works and Nobody Cares (1965)
Allegedly, electricity runs а variety of things, like vacuum cleaners that bust, television sets that explode, and lights that burn out. I admit its existence, but I don't really believe in it.
Nothing Works and Nobody Cares (1965)
If a man does away with his traditional way of living and throws away his good customs, he had better first make certain that he has something of value to replace them.
Something of Value (1955)
The Old Man just claimed that the stature of the man was measured by how much he could smile when fate was beating him over the head with a stick.
The Old Man's Boy Grows Older (1957)
Dinnertime, and the living is greasy.
Nothing Works and Nobody Cares (1965)
[M]odern sucker civilization, in which, basically, most things that are not worth doing are done badly.
Nothing Works and Nobody Cares (1965)
If they keep exposing you to education, you might even realize some day that man becomes immortal only in what he writes on paper, or hacks into rock, or slabbers onto a canvas, or pulls out of a piano.
The Old Man and the Boy (1957)
I reckon the years between forty and sixty are the best a man's apt to put in. He can do dang near anything as good as he could when he was a youngster, and what he can't jump over he's smart enough to walk around.
The Old Man's Boy Grows Older (1957)
There is a saying among the Masai of Africa—or maybe it's the Somali—that a brave man is frightened three times by a lion: when he first sees its track, when he first hears its roar, and when he first sees the lion in the flesh.
The Old Man's Boy Grows Older (1957)
[A] man who catches fish or shoots game has got to make it fit to eat before he sleeps. Otherwise it’s all a waste and a sin to take it if you can’t use it.
The Old Man and the Boy (1957)
Some of the conversations from next door, upstairs and downstairs would make an interesting addendum for the memoirs of Christine Keeler. You can hear beds squeak all round; you can hear toilets flush. On a clear day, you can hear a cockroach belch.
Nothing Works and Nobody Cares (1965)
[T]hat commodity Ben Franklin trapped in a precursor to the Coca-Cola bottle.
Nothing Works and Nobody Cares (1965)
[A]ny time a boy is ready to learn about guns is the time he’s ready, no matter how young he is, and you can’t start too young to learn how to be careful.
The Old Man and the Boy (1957)