The labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process

America is indeed a revelation, though not quite the one that was planned. Given a clean slate, man, it was hoped, would write the future. Instead, he has written his past.

To be disesteemed by people you don't have much respect for is not the worst fate.

Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility.

The passion for fact in a raw state is a peculiarity of the novelist.

The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.

Making love, we are all more alike than we are when we are talking or acting.