Quotes from James Leo Herlihy

Be yourself, no one can ever tell you you're doing it wrong.

Too much time alone had done something peculiar to his heart: A confused and unreliable organ at best, it now held something akin to joy.

There is no Beatitude for the lonesome. The Book doesn't say they are blessed.

His own life made very little noise of its own, and he found that in silence there was something downright perilous: It had enemies in it that only sound could drive out.

What he wanted was something soft and fat and gentle, full of rounding sweet places to hide in.

Having no sense at all of where he might be headed, Joe Buck simply meandered deeper and deeper into September

He lives like a fugitive to avoid becoming a hired killer in Uncle Sams Army.

I just saw a squirrel I used to know, but I'm not sure he recognized me. Last line of 'Season of the Witch

There is a certain way of climbing inside of time that gives a man ownership of the world and everything in it. Like, for instance, when you hear a jukebox it plays only what you need to hear.

I see good men performing wonderful deeds, smoking marijuana and feeding LSD to cops, telling fairytales about the future. Spectacular things, no doubt. But where? In the White House? On Wall Street? No. These wonderful things happen in tenement buildings, in the slums, in dying cities. Forgive me if I don't expect these, uh, these—great things—to change the course of history.

Her voice went soft and sweet: it seemed to be luring some small child into a gas chamber with promises of candy.

She had enormous gray eyes and knees that made you cry they were so sorry looking and knobby. If there is some part of every loved one that will make you cry to contemplate it, such for Joe were these poor, sad, bony knees of Sally Buck.

Time is a Colossus, and he's marching up Broadway!

She smiled and Joe was touched suddenly by the very special beauty of a lady at the far, far end of her youth - old age just under the surface of her skin, but not yet emerged, not yet.

It said, You are in a burning building and Jesus is the only possible fireman.

Be yourself. No one can ever tell you you're doing it wrong.