Ordinary life does not interest me.

We see things the way we are, not the way they are.

I prefer by far the warmth and softness to mere brilliancy and coldness. Some people remind me of sharp dazzling diamonds. Valuable but lifeless and loveless. Others, of the simplest field flowers, with hearts full of dew and with all the tints of celestial beauty reflected in their modest petals.

Beware of allowing a tactless word, a rebuttal, a rejection to obliterate the whole sky

He, who had done more than any human being to draw her out of the caves of her secret, folded life, now threw her down into deeper recesses of fear and doubt. The fall was greater than she had ever known, because she had ventured so far into emotion and had abandoned herself to it.

jazz is the expression of America's romantic self, its sensual potency, its lyrical force.

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.