Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of 'liking' a work of art or not liking it; the more improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test.

If I were to live my life over again, I would be an American. I would steep myself in America, I would know no other land.

Autobiography may be the preeminent kind of American expression.

Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.

To treat a big subject in the intensely summarized fashion demanded by an evening's traffic of the stage when the evening, freely clipped at each end, is reduced to two hours and a half, is a feat of which the difficulty looms large.

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.

One doesn't defend one's god: one's god is in himself a defense.