Quotes from Clifford Irving

IF YOU WOULD HAVE A MAN STAY AS HE IS, THEN TREAT HIM AS HE IS. IF YOU WOULD HAVE A MAN CHANGE, THEN TREAT HIM AS THE PERSON YOU WOULD WANT HIM TO BECOME.

OLD AGE AND TREACHERY WILL OVERCOME YOUTH AND SKILL.

Aber dann blickte ich auf. Über dem Bücherregal hing eine gerahmte Zeichnung. Sie zeigte einen Hai, der im Begriff ist, einen Barsch zu verschlingen; der Barsch seinerseits schickt sich an, eine Elritze zu schlucken, und diese wiederum will gerade einen Wurm fressen. Der Hai sagt: "Es gibt jede Menge Gerechtigkeit." Der Barsch sagt: "Es gibt ein bißchen Gerechtigkeit." Die Elritze klagt: "Es gibt keine Gerechtigkeit", und der Wurm schreit: "Hilfe!

was beginning to grasp the human equation: to be intelligently alive means to cherish what you've got, fight for what you want, spurn what you don't want, and forget about what you can't have.

Life was an ongoing war against unseen and usually undefined enemies. Your own naiveté was one of those enemies. You had to battle it, and improvise, and guard your back. See

He sank his head in his hand to blot out the light. For the first time in his life he suffered from more than a personal sense of loss. He suffered because others suffered.

my throat and told him that I'd have to consult with my client. "How

get him." He stopped for a

things like, "He ain't much to see, but he looks real good through the bottom of a glass.

Mexicans have a fundamental belief in the doomed quality of humankind's finest schemes. Why hurry fate?

Why do women have cunts?" "I can't imagine." "So that men will talk to them.

Mr. Irving, you and I could get along and accomplish some things here together if you didn't maintain this basic attitude of `us against them.'" I shrugged. "I have that attitude because that's exactly the way it is." "It needn't be. If we cooperated more — " "If my aunt had balls, Mr. Grzgorek, she'd be my uncle.

You know the story of the Harvard graduate comes to Texas a while back and says to his rancher uncle, 'Uncle Will, how come you can get heavier punishment here for stealing a cow than for killing a man?' Uncle Will says, 'Look out the window. See those cows out to pasture? See any of them look like they need stealing?' " Warren

Bless your little cotton socks," he said. He threw me a kiss and handed me the case file.

dog'll hunt." We were southerners and spoke the same language. This was not a visiting lecturer in jurisprudence but a man in the trenches. Suddenly I wanted to be there with him, under fire. I shook Beldon Ruth's hard hand, and I took the job he offered me. When I passed the bar exam I married Toba, and we moved into an apartment on Neptune Beach, forty minutes from the courthouse in downtown Jacksonville.

once you commit, don't hesitate or skimp. Do it right.

A good read is one of the amazing pleasures offered to us by civilization.

to be intelligently alive means to cherish what you've got, fight for what you want, spurn what you don't want, and forget about what you can't have.