It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it.

The time's come: there's a terrific thunder-cloud advancing upon us, a mighty storm is coming to freshen us up....It's going to blow away all this idleness and indifference, and prejudice against work....I'm going to work, and in twenty-five or thirty years' time every man and woman will be working.

I observed that after marriage people cease to be curious.

If there's a gun on the wall in act one, scene one, you must fire the gun by act three, scene two. If you fire a gun in act three, scene two, you must see the gun on the wall in act one, scene one.

We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well.

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!

All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.