Riches ... don't consist in having things, but in not having to do something you don't want to do. ... Riches is being able to thumb your nose.

I expect this is what death is like when you meet it. Sort of wildly unfair but inevitable.

Letterwriting is the natural outlet of the "odds." The busy-bodies, the idle, the perverted, the cranks, the feel-it-my-duties ... Also the plain depraved. They all write letters. It's their safe outlet, you see. They can be as interfering, as long-winded, as obscene, as pompous, as one-idea'd, as they like on paper, and no one can kick them for it. So they write. My God, how they write!

If you think about the unthinkable long enough it becomes quite reasonable.

You can't have a tin can tied to your tail and go through life pretending it isn't there.

Most people's first books are their best anyways. It's the one they wanted most to write.

There were people whose only interest in life was writing letters. To the newspapers, to authors, to strangers, to City Councils, to the police. It did not much matter to whom; the satisfaction of writing seemed to be all.