The Mexican War was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murders settled on us, the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.

And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.

I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love.

Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?

[Man] is the only animal who lives outside of himself, whose drive is in external things—property, houses, money, concepts of power. He lives in his cities and his factories, in his business and job and art. But having projected himself into these external complexities, he is them. His house, his automobile are a part of him and a large part of him. This is beautifully demonstrated by a thing doctors know—that when a man loses his possessions a very common result is sexual impotence.

The human is the only guilty animal.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.