If you're telling me I'm not mature, that's one thing I don't cry over since as far as I can make out it's the same thing as being dead.

We all begin life as parasites within the mother, and writers begin their existence imitatively, within the body of letters.

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce. Mark Twain Women are an alien race set down among us.

The first breathe of adultery is the freest.

Fiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it.

An American in London...cannot but be impressed and charmed by the city. The momumentality of Washington, the thriving business of New York, the antique intimacy of Boston, plus a certain spacious and open feeling reminiscent of Denver and San Francisco-all these he finds combined for his pleasure.

There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first.