idealism, that gaudy coloring matter of passion, fades when it is brought beneath the trenchant white light of knowledge. Ideals, like mountains, are best at a distance.

Happiness is a hardy annual.

... in the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language.

A farmer's got to be born, same as a fool. You can't make a corn pone out of flour dough by the twistin' of it.

As far back as I remember, long before I could write, I had played at making stories. But not until I was seven or more, did I begin to pray every night, "O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!"

anger and jealousy are spasms of the nerves, not of the heart.

Conscience represents a fetich to which good people sacrifice their own happiness, bad people their neighbors'.