California has all the beauties of youth as well as its idiocies and vices.

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

... France is the genius among nations.

genius must ever be imperfect. Life is not long enough nor slow enough for both brain and character to grow side by side to superhuman proportions.

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

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.

California has all the beauties of youth as well as its idiocies and vices.