Feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember

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.

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

If he had to bring all the bitterness and hatred of the world into his heart, he was not going to be in love with her again.

The rich get richer and the poor get - children.

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

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. That's my middle-west - not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow.