Writing, to be memorable, must be done in a state of impassioned serenity.

Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.

About mistakes it's funny. You got to make your own; and not only that, if you try to keep people from making theirs they get mad.

The ideal view for daily writing, hour for hour, is the blank brick wall of a cold-storage warehouse. Failing this, a stretch of sky will do, cloudless if possible.

Most of the men regarded Europe as a wine list. In their mental geography Rheims, Rhine, Moselle, Bordeaux, Champagne, or Würzburg were not localities but libations.

If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in, there's something wrong with American politics.

Wasn't marriage, like life, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well ordered and protected and guarded. Wasn't it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt.