J.P. Donleavy Quotes

Revenge is what I want. Nothing but pure unadulterated revenge. But my mother brought me up to be a lady.

See all the women seated, youth in their face lifts, old age in their hands.

O summer and soft wind. Relieves the heart and makes living cheaper.

Ginny Cupper took me in her car out to the spread fields of Indiana. Parking near the edge of woods and walking out into the sunny rows of corn, waving seeds to a yellow horizon. She wore a white blouse and a gray patch of sweat under her arms and the shadow of her nipples was gray. We were rich. So rich we could never die. Ginny laughed and laughed, white saliva on her teeth lighting up the deep red of her mouth, fed the finest food in the world. Ginny was afraid of nothing. She was young and old. Her brown arms and legs swinging in wild optimism, beautiful in all their parts. She danced on the long hood of her crimson Cadillac, and watching her, I thought that God must be female. She leaped into my arms and knocked me to the ground and screamed into my mouth.

She thought too that women didn't know what to do with themselves these days which could turn them into harridans. Hardly a female friend she knew wasn't miserable. Either mind dumb with children, or in the married condition married to an earnest toiler, or lonely unmarried in their successful career.

... With a slight miscalculated leap cleared to the iron picket fence. Put the fear of God into me, picket fences and balls don't mix.

When you don't have any money the problem is food. When you have money it's sex. When you have both it's health. If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Writing is turning life's worst moments into money.