Whatever you have lived, you can write & by hard work & a genuine apprenticeship, you can learn to write well; but what you have not lived you cannot write, you can only pretend to write it.

The public is the only critic whose judgment is worth anything at all.

You may have noticed that the less I know about a subject the more confidence I have, and the more new light I throw on it.

Information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious otter of roses out of the otter.

It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing-and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite - that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.

If I cannot smoke in heaven, then I shall not go.

We must look for our own blame to find our own personality.