Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.

Hold fast to whatever fragments of love that exist, for sometimes a mosaic is more beautiful than an unbroken pattern.

The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).

A novel must be a rich forest known at the start only by instinct.

A writer's business is minding other people's business ... all the vices of the village gossip are the virtues of the writer.

For a genius to be a genius, he must have a selfless slave between himself and the world.

All Americans come from Ohio originally, if only briefly.