Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.

My own approach to literary problems is very like the one Dr. Johnson's blind housekeeper used when she poured tea-she put her finger inside the cup.

I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up.

I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.

There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.

Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing.

I do not like the raw sound of the human voice in unison unless it is under the discipline of music.