Doesn't all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material?

Violence commands both literature and life, and violence is always crude and distorted.

Nothing, except the weather report or a general maxim of conduct, is so unsafe to rely upon as a theory of fiction.

I was always a feminist, for I liked intellectual revolt as much as I disliked physical violence. On the whole, I think women havelost something precious, but have gained, immeasurably, by the passing of the old order.

What fools people are when they think they can make two lives belong together by saying words over them.

...America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the "tough guy;" today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive.

The surest way of winning love is to look as if you didn't need it.