Art transcends war. Art is the language of God and war is the barking of men. Beethoven is bigger than war.

Oh - oh, why is it that the members of a family feel privileged to treat one another with a cruelty they would not exhibit to the merest stranger?

The literary wiseacres prognosticate in many languages, as they have throughout so many centuries, setting the stage for new hautmonde in letters and making up the public's mind.

Nervous hands as if the fingers were dripping from them like icicles.

[Wishing her mother had named her Beulah:] At least you did not sit on your beulah.

Isn't success ridiculously easy, once it begins to succeed? ... after the strain and sweat and pushing until the very groins of your being shrieked protest, something like momentum happened. It took your wits and your concentration and your continued willing sweat, of course, to keep it going, but the success of success had ball bearings.

Any work of art ... is great when it makes you feel that its creator has dipped into your very heart for his sensation.