I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That’s no matter.) But warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.

Why! Why! Why is the middle-class so stodgy - so utterly without a sense of humor?

There is no feeling to be compared with the feeling of having written and finished a story.

If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools.

To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure.

By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with... the earth and the wonders thereof - the sea - the sun.

Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to be a writer can afford to indulge in it.