Intelligence is measured by a person's ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.

He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths - so that he could 'come over' some afternoon to a stranger's garden.

Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meagre.

Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you'll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all.

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.

Well, I can't describe her exactly-except to say that she was beautiful. She was-tremendously alive.

It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people.