I love thee and thou art so lovely and so wonderful and so beautiful and it does such things to me to be with thee that I feel as though I wanted to die when I am loving thee.

I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.

Romance was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes.

God knows I didn't mean to fall in love with her

No well-run yacht basin in Southern waters is complete without at least two sun-burned, salt bleached-headed Esthonians who are waiting for a check from their last article. When it comes they will set sail to another yacht basin and write another saga.