Extreme cold when it first arrives seems to generate cheerfulness and sociability. For a few hours all life's dubious problems are dropped in favor of the clear and congenial task of keeping alive.

In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

Life is like writing with a pen. You can cross out your past but you can't erase it.

People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.

Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.