It isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what is breaking up modern marriage.

Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.

In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone.

I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.

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.

A writer's style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias...it is the Self escaping into the open.