The town is an advertisement for itself; none of its charms are left to the visitor's imagination.

California is a tragic country — like Palestine, like every Promised Land. Its short history is a fever-chart of migrations — the land rush, the gold rush, the oil rush, the movie rush, the Okie fruit-picking rush, the wartime rush to the aircraft factories — followed, in each instance, by counter-migrations of the disappointed and unsuccessful, moving sorrowfully homeward.

What’s so phony nowadays is all this familiarity. Pretending there isn’t any difference between people —well, like you were saying about minorities, this morning. If you and I are no different, what do we have to give each other? How can we ever be friends?

The past is just something that's over.

The Quito telephone service is about as reliable as roulette.

Every writer has certain subjects that they write about again and again, and . . . most people's books are just variations on certain themes.

Sometimes awful things have their own beauty.