For a bag of pepper, they could cut each other's throats without hesitation, and would forswear their souls... The bizarre obstinacy of that desire made them defy death in a thousand shapes; the unknown seas, the loathsome diseases; wounds, captivity, hunger, pestilence and despair. It made them great! By heavens! It made them heroic; and it made them pathetic, too, in their craving for trade with the inflexible death levying its toll on young and old

Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

Never test another man by your own weakness.

Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.

A historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience.

Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.