I have in my own fashion learned the lesson that life is effort, unremittingly repeated.

You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.

The main object of the novel is to represent life. . .The success of a work of art, to my mind, may be measured by the degree to which it produces a certain illusion; that illusion makes it appear to us for the time that we have lived another life - that we have had a miraculous enlargement of experience.

Writing is not primarily escape, but use.

A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.

I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.

Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.