My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.

I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned.

As war and government prove, insanity is the most contagious of diseases.

Of all the featherless beasts, only man, chained by his self-imposed slavery to the clock, denies the elemental fire and proceeds as best he can about his business, suffering quietly, martyr to his madness. Much to learn.

Chastity is more a state of mind than of anatomy.

If, as some say, evil lies in the hearts and not the institutions of men, then there's hardly a distinction worth making between, say, Hitler's Germany and Rebecca's Sunnybrook Farm.

New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive anywhere, why live in New York?