It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.

A writer wastes nothing.

He did not understand all he had heard, but from his clandestine glimpse into the privacy of these two, with all the world that his short experience could conceive of at their feet, he had gathered that life for everybody was a struggle, sometimes magnificent from a distance, but always difficult and surprisingly simple and a little sad.

You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

Once we were one person, and always it will be a little that way.

You've got an awfully kissable mouth.

he could transform the barest incident into a thing of curve and contour.