There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them the little that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.

A writer should be of as great probity and honesty as a priest of God. He is either honest or not, as a woman is either chaste or not, and after one piece of dishonest writing he is never the same again.

Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done.

Bigotry is an odd thing. To be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure you are right and nothing makes that surety and righteousness like continence. Continence is the foe of heresy.

The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them.

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.