My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom--freedom from violence and falsehood, no matter how the last two manifest themselves.

If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.

In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you'll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball.

He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of nothing, cannot be an artist.

Death is terrifying, but it would be even more terrifying to find out that you are going to live forever and never die.

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.

He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people.