They nodded when the baker be...

They nodded when the baker began to speak of loneliness, and of the sense of doubt and limitation that had come to him in his middle years. - P83

They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving. - P84

What rival male has dared to ...

What rival male has dared to bugle a mating call on my turf? - P188

The cynical interpretation would be "This is unequivocal evidence that the world is a place of deep unfairness." - P192

Mind you, hard work guarantee...

Mind you, hard work guarantees nothing in realms of creativity. (Nothing guarantees anything in realms of creativity.) - P183

Do what you love to do, and do it with both seriousness and lightness. - P183

But creative living can be an amazing vocation, if you have the love and courage and persistence to see it that way. - P185

I would not trade a minute of...

I would not trade a minute of that encounter for anything. - P181

That is the Song of the Disciplined Half-Ass. - P181

˝We all spend our twenties an...

"We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we’re so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you won’t be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth—nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow." - P174

Create whatever you want to create—and let it be stupendously imperfect, because it’s exceedingly likely that nobody will even notice. And that’s awesome. - P175

"Done is better than good." - P176

General George Patton’s: "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." - P176

Or, to paraphrase: A good-enough novel violently written now is better than a perfect novel meticulously written never. - P176

You may want your work to be perfect, in other words; I just want mine to be finished. - P177