It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.

Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.

In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.

Books may be written in all sorts of places. Verbal inspiration may enter the berth of a mariner on board a ship frozen fast in a river in the middle of a town.

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

Happiness, happiness ... the flavor is with you-with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please.

My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.