O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!

... the life of the mind is reality, and love without romantic illumination is a spiritless matter.

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

a successful politician does not have convictions; he has emotions.

... 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.

1. Always wait between books for the springs to fill up and flow over. 2. Always preserve within a wild sanctuary, an inaccessible valley of reveries. 3. Always, and as far as it is possible, endeavor to touch life on every side; but keep the central vision of the mind, the inmost light, untouched and untouchable.

Nothing in life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it.