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

I let myself go at the beginning and write with an easy mind, but by the time I get to the middle I begin to grow timid and to fear my story will be too long. . .That is why the beginning of my stories is always very promising and looks as though I were starting on a novel, and the middle is huddled and timid, and the end is...like fireworks.

The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can't return even if it wants to.

I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly it's not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything, through my infidelity.

My mistress has come home; at last I've seen her. Now I'm ready to die.

All saints have past and all sinners have a future.

Eyes - the head's chief of police. They watch and make mental notes.