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.

Plot and melodrama were in every life; in some so briefly as hardly to be recognized, in others-in that of certain men and women in the public eye, for instance-they were almost in the nature of a continuous performance.

The very commonplaces of life are components of its eternal mystery.

Oh, what is young love! The urge of the race. A blaze that ends in babies or ashes.

The world changed somewhat in form during its progress, but never in substance.

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.

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.