You cannot write on the heart of another what you do not feel yourself.

How a big majority of book critics and authors have come to believe and to teach that no book is true to life unless it is true to the worst in life, God knows.

we know by the odour that occasionally we are visited by skunks, which are not poetic but very beautiful.

Now what is a guest? A thing of a day! A person who disturbs your routine and interferes with important concerns. Why should any one be grateful for company? Why should time and money be lavished on visitors? They come. You overwork yourself. They go. You are glad of it. You return the visit, because it's the only way to have back at them.

The Cardinal ... It was as if a pulsing heart of flame passed by when he came winging through the orchard.

To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to force him to lay it down with a higher ideal of life than he had when he took it up.

Do you know that being a stranger is the hardest thing that can happen to any one in all this world?