All men are ignorant, just on different subjects.

I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.

The writing begins when you’ve finished. Only then do you know what you’re trying to say.

I have been born more times than anybody except Krishna.

Whiskey is carried into committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues.

An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop.... I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen.

I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.