History is, in its essence, exciting; to present it as dull is, to my mind, stark and unforgivable misrepresentation.

Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.

What pioneer ever had chart and a lighthouse to steer by?

A woman's biography - with about eight famous historical exceptions - so often turns out to be the story of a man and the woman who helped his career.

your concert-goer, though he feed upon symphony as a lamb upon milk, is no true lover if he play no instrument. Your true lover does more than admire the muse; he sweats a little in her service.

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

People who carry a musical soul about them are, I think, more receptive than others. They smile more readily. One feels in them a pleasant propensity toward the lesser sins, a pleasing readiness also to admit the possibility that on occasion they may be in the wrong--they may be mistaken.