That was the way with grief: it left you alone for months together until you thought that you were cured, and then without warning it blotted out the sunlight.

A thousand people drowned in floods in China are news: a solitary child drowned in a pond is tragedy.

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

Nothing puts things in perspective as quickly as a mountain.

Horse sense is the instinct that keeps horses from betting on men.

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!

Fasting was good for the imagination but bad for logic.