If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.

I am now and have always been a stranger to the realm of practical matters.

Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far asblather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.

I am writing a play which I probably will not finish until the end of November. I am writing it with considerable pleasure, though I sin frightfully against the conventions of the stage. It is a comedy with three female parts, six male, four acts, a landscape (view of the lake), lots of talk on literature, little action and tons of love.

Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.

Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given.