For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

Fish," the old man said. "Fish, you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me too?

War is no longer made by simply analyzed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule.

Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?

I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.

To stay in places and to leave, to trust, to distrust, to no longer believe and believe again, . . . to watch the snow come, to watch it go, to hear rain on a tent, to know where I can find what I want.

Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary.