I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified.

Most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don't in the beginning.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.

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

But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.

but they were frightened at his survivant will, once a will to live, now become a will to die.

A writer like me must have an utter confidence, an utter faith in his star. It's an almost mystical feeling, a feeling of nothing-can-happen-to me, nothing-can-touch-me.... I once had it. But through a series of blows, many of them my own fault, something happened to that sense of immunity and I lost my grip.