Fame is indeed beautiful and benign and gentle and satisfying, but happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things.

One must always say things that aim to interest, because in the world one must after all pay for one's keep.

A genius who does not know that he is a genius is no genius.

The highest thing one can do in literature is to succeed in saying that thing which one meant to say. There is nothing better than that - to make the world see your thoughts as you see them.

I want fame more than I can tell. But more than I want fame I want happiness.

I am a genius. Then it amused me to keep saying so, but now it does not. I expected to be happy sometime. Now I know I shall never be.

I have never read a line of Walt Whitman.