Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

I am too much a moralist at heart, and really want to preach at people in some acceptable form, rather than entertain them.

Any person with any imagination is bound to be afraid.

Rosemary bubbled with delight at the trunks. Her naivete responded whole-heartedly to the expensive simplicity of the Divers, unaware of its complexity and its lack of innocence, unaware that it was all a selection of quality rather than quantity from the run of the world's bazaar; and that the simplicity of behavior also, the nursery-like peace and good will, the emphasis on the simpler virtues, was part of a desperate bargain with the gods and had been attained through struggles she could not have guessed at.

I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words.

In a few days I'll have lived one score and three days in this vale of tears. On I plod-always bored, often drunk, doing no penance for my faults-rather do I become more tolerant of myself from day to day, hardening my crystal heart with blasphemous humor and shunning only toothpicks, pathos, and poverty as being the three unforgivable things in life.

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.