And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.

Her failure was a useful preliminary to success.

The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.

Everybody who does anything at all does too much.

The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.

She gave so many reasons that I've forgotten them all.

Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.