What a man marries for's hard to tell ... an' what a woman marries for's past findin' out.

My first reading of Tolstoy affected me as a revelation from heaven, as the trumpet of the judgment. What he made me feel was notthe desire to imitate, but the conviction that imitation was futile.

It is only by knowing how little life has in store for us that we are able to look on the bright side and avoid disappointment.

for my own purpose, I defined the art of fiction as experience illuminated.

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

The transcendental point of view, the habit of thought bred by communion with earth and sky, had refined the grain while it had roughened the husk.

In the past few years, I have made a thrilling discovery ... that until one is over sixty, one can never really learn the secret of living. One can then begin to live, not simply with the intense part of oneself, but with one's entire being.