They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

The fools think I am writing algebra but what I am really writing is geometry.

I would take anything I love and throw it off the highest cliff you ever saw and not wait to hear it bounce.

I'm always reading books-as many as there are. I ration myself on them so that I'll always be in supply.

The sea is the same as it has been since before men ever went on it in boats.

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you'll dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.

I've been wondering about Dostoyevsky. How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?