My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.

Any man who is not a communist at the age of twenty is a fool. Any man who is still a communist at the age of thirty is an even bigger fool.

Compassion is the fellow-feeling of the unsound.

I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.

If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you'll find you've done it.

If you demand my authorities for this and that, I must reply that only those who have never hunted up the authorities as I have believe that there is any authority who is not contradicted flatly by some other authority.