one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty−one that everything afterward savors of anti−climax.

You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.

Life is so damned hard, so damned hard... It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does.

I'm not much like myself any more.

Progress was a labyrinth ... people plunging blindly in and then rushing wildly back, shouting that they had found it ... the invisible king-the élan vital-the principle of evolution ... writing a book, starting a war, founding a school.

The unwelcome November rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence, the night.

Every author ought to write every book as if he were going to be beheaded the day he finished it.