The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.

Oh, the strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!

I think today if we forbade our illiterate children to touch the wonderful things of our literature, perhaps they might steal them and find secret joy.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed