Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States that are 'story cities'- New York, of course, New Orleans, and, best of the lot, San Francisco.

The function of the novelist... is to comment upon life as he sees it.

Things can happen in some cities and the tale of them will be interesting: the same story laid in another city would be ridiculous.

[The Muse of our Fiction of the future] will lead you - if you are humble and honest with her - straight into a World of Working Men, crude of speech, swift of action, strong of passion, straight to the heart of a new life.

No one to love, none to caress, Left all alone in this world's wilderness.

Evil is short lived. Never judge of the whole round of life by the mere segment you can see. The whole is, in the end, perfect.

I never truckled. I never took off the hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. I told them the truth. They liked it or they didn't like it. What had that to do with me? I told them the truth.