Quotes from Thomas Berger

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.

Is it not human for us all to have two minds, the one that sees an aspect of eternity, the other that must deal with the life which is measured in Time?

There is no permanent winning or losing when things move, as they should, in a circle. For is not life continuous? And though I shall die, shall I not also continue to live in everything that is?

he referred to himself like he was an institution: personally, he didn't care so much about these supposed outrages of mine, but he could not let the noble firm of Wild Bill Hickok, Inc., be loosely dealth with.

O foolish man, for God doth detect every nuance of the sick will!

Caroline was one of them people who utter three failures of judgment for every two words they speak, and by trying to correct them, you only succeed in presenting further occasion on which to exercise their vice, so I kept my remarks to the minimum. "So after

No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.

Believe me, the real romantic person is him who ain't done anything but imagine. If you have actually participated in disasters, like me, you get conservative.

If you want to really relax sometime, just fall to rock bottom and you'll be a happy man. Most all troubles come from having standards.

If you want to really relax sometime, just fall to rock bottom and you'll be a happy man. Most all troubles come from having standards.

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.

You got to knock a man down and put your knife at his throat before he'll hear you, like I did to that trooper. The truth seems hateful to most everybody.

I expect Custer was crazy enough to believe he would win, being the type of man who carries the whole world within his own head and thus when his passion is aroused and floods his mind, reality is utterly drowned.

Time is the bastard offspring of an incestuous act that God committed upon reality." Merlin to Arthur in "Arthur Rex

The buffalo eats grass, I eat him, and when I die, the earth eats me and sprouts more grass. Therefore nothing is ever lost, and each thing is everything forever, though all things move.

It was strange how in no time at all everybody went from fear to being excruciatingly bored, and the very women who yesterday had been helpless victims and just minutes earlier were howling in fright, now began to advance on him threatening with their fists and saying: 'Git on out of here, you old skunk!' Which shows something about the way a female is put together; she will suffer any outrage so long as it is interesting, but bore her and she don't know fear.

Most of the people I have really cared about in this world, I have elected to the position. I have a belief that a man's real relatives are scattered throughout the universe, and seldom if ever belong to his immediate kin.

Believe me, the real romantic person is him who ain't done anything but imagine. If you have actually participated in disasters, like me, you get conservative.

I have a belief that a man's real relatives are scattered throughout the universe, and seldom if ever belong to his immediate kin.

I love her still, for if you know anything about that kind of feeling, you know how close it is connected to hopelessness and thus is about the only thing in civilization that don't degenerate with time.

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

You might have thought the colonel would be interested in my experiences of five years' barbarism, but he wasn't. I wasn't long in discovering that it is a rare person in the white world who wants to hear what the other fellow says, all the more so when the other fellow really knows what he is talking about.

When you run into a story of more than three against one and one winning, then you have heard a lie.

Tell us, Merlin," said he, "why do we feel no sense of triumph in this?" And Merlin answered, "Well, is not triumph a childish feeling, Sire?