One might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left.

... since she might not be splendid, she would at least be immaculate.

A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can’t see--that’s my idea of happiness.

He was there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him.

In art economy is always beauty.

The "germ," wherever gathered, has ever been for me, "the germ of a story," and most of the stories strained to shape under my hand have sprung from a single small seed, a seed as remote and windblown as a casual hint.

Sorrow comes in great waves...but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.