I am a Californian, and we have twice the individuality and originality of any people in the United States. We always get quite huffy when we are spoken of as merely Americans.

Nowhere can it rain harder and with a more tiresome persistence than in California during the brief season when it rains at all.

There is a strong conservative instinct in the average man or woman, born of the hereditary fear of life, that prompts them to cling to old standards, or, if too intelligent to look inhospitably upon progress, to move very slowly. Both types are the brakes and wheelhorses necessary to a stable civilization, but history, even current history in the newspapers, would be dull reading if there were no adventurous spirits willing to do battle for new ideas.

Never trust a woman who will not lie about her age after thirty. She is unwomanly and unhuman and there is no knowing what crimes she will commit.

In times of panic man seems to exchange his soul for a tail.

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.

To put a tempting face aside when duty demands every faculty is a lesson which takes most men longest to learn.