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

Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding critics. As only those who dare to make mistakes succeed greatly, only those who shake free the wings of their imagination brush, once in a way, the secrets of the great pale world. If such writers go wrong, it is not for the mere brains to tell them so

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.

Has it ever occurred to you, that the rich are at the mercy of the poor, not the poor at that of the rich? Who permits us to be rich if not the poor?

... the irony of life is not that you cannot forget but that you can.

... books are too heterogeneous an interest to furnish a vital one in life, a reason for being alive.

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.