the curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities.

The only two good words that can be said for a hurricane are that it gives sufficient warning of its approach, and that it blows from one point of the compass at a time.

Writing was my real life and I was more at home with the people of my imagination than with the best I met in the objective world.

her age was that indeterminate mixture of everlasting youth and anticipated wisdom which is the glory and the curse of genius.

Civilization in certain respects is as inadequate as it was a thousand years ago.

Here is a simple recipe to begin with. Get up every morning with the set intention of writing and go to your desk and sit there for three hours, whether you accomplish anything or not. Before long you will find that you are writing madly, not waiting for inspiration.

there is no greater fraud or bore than the writer who has acquired the art of saying nothing brilliantly.