It is easy to convince a man who already thinks as you do.

I suppose I am a born novelist, for the things I imagine are more vital and vivid to me than the things I remember.

It would appear, from the best examples, that the proper way of beginning a preface to one's work is with a humble apology for having written at all.

Few forms of life are so engaging as birds.

...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.

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

It is lovely, when I forget all birthdays, including my own, to find that somebody remembers me.