Weak people can be very stubborn.

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

The worst of pushing horrible things down into one's subconscious is that when they pop up again they are as fresh as if they had been in a refrigerator. You haven't allowed time to get at them to-to mould them over a little.

One would expect boredom to be a great yawning emotion, but it isn't, of course. It's a small niggling thing.

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!

Nothing puts things in perspective as quickly as a mountain.

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