This is what i find most encouraging about the writing trades: they allow mediocre people who are patient and industrious to revise their stupidity, to edit themselves into something like intelligence. They also allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.

The triumph of anything is a matter of organization.

Most writers are not quick-witted when they talk. Novelists, in particular, drag themselves around in society like gut-shot bears.

My ancestors were all Freethinkers, formerly Catholics. It was science and Darwin, in particular, that made them decide, as educated people, which they were, that the priest, nice as he was, didn't know what he was talking about.

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

The canary bird in the coal mine theory of the arts: artists should be treasured as alarm systems.

One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.