Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.

This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.

The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity.

When you’re young you prefer the vulgar months, the fullness of the seasons. As you grow older you learn to like the in-between times, the months that can’t make up their minds. Perhaps it’s a way of admitting that things can’t ever bear the same certainty again.

But that’s one advantage of fiction, you can speed up time.