The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear Readers, are an afterthought.

In America ... who is to stop congress from spending too much money. They will not stop themselves, that is certain. Everybody has to think about that now. Who is to stop them.

In France one must adapt oneself to the fragrance of a urinal.

One of the things that I discovered in lecturing was that gradually one ceased to hear what one said one heard what the audience hears one say.

No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept. For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.

Honesty is a selfish virtue. Yes I am honest enough.