I've liked life well enough, but I reckon I'll like death even better as soon as I've gotten used to the feel of it. ... I shouldn't be amazed to find it less lonely than life after I'm once safely settled.

No one in the modern world is more lonely than the writer with a literary conscience.

The world of the egotist is, inevitably, a narrow world, and the boundaries of self are limited to the close horizon of personality.... But, within this horizon, there is room for many attributes that are excellent.

Borrowed illusions are better than none.

Evidently, whatever else marriage might prevent, it was not a remedy for isolation of spirit.

Although the primitive in art may be both interesting and impressive, as portrayed in American fiction it is conspicuous for dullness alone. Drab persons living drab lives, observed by drab minds and reported in drab writing.

A good novel cannot be too long or a bad novel too short.