I would like [the working man] to give me back books and newspapers and theories. And I would like to give him back, in return, his old insouciance, and rich, original spontaneity and fullness of life.

I would rather sit still in a state of peace on a stone than ride in the motor-car of a multi-millionaire and feel the peacelessness of the multi-millionaire poisoning me.

If only we could live two lives: the first in which to make one's mistakes, and the second in which to profit by them.

I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog....Only in the novel are all things given full play.

I will wait and watch till the day of David at last shall be finished, and wisdom no more fox-faced, and the blood gets back its flame.

If a woman hasn't got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she's a dry stick as a rule.

That's it! When you come to know men, that's how they are: too sensitive in the wrong place.