It was the old New York way...the way people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except those who gave rise to them.

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

She was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company.

There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free.

Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.

He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. That new, that personal, vision is attained only by looking long enough at the object represented to make it the writer's own; and the mind which would bring this secret gem to fruition must be able to nourish it with an accumulated wealth of knowledge and experience.