America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large.

Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.

Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.

It is never possible for a novelist to deny time inside the fabric of his novel: he must cling, however lightly, to the thread of his story, he must touch the interminable tapeworm, otherwise he becomes unintelligible, which, in his case, is a blunder.

When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else.

Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better.

The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.