Beware of the conversationalist who adds "in other words." He is merely starting afresh.

The world has been printing books for 450 years, and yet gunpowder still has a wider circulation. Never mind! Printer's ink is the greater explosive: it will win.

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.

Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water.

Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' book. A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error.

There are certain people whom one feels almost inclined to urge to hurry up and die so that their letters can be published.