I suppose there is something in all of us that harks back to the soil. When you come to think of it, what are picnics but outcroppings of instinct? No one really enjoys them or expects to enjoy them, but with the first warm days some prehistoric instinct takes us out into the woods, to fry potatoes over a strangling wood fire or spend the next week getting grass stains out of our clothes. It must be instinct; every atom of intelligence warns us to stay at home near the refrigerator.

[The writer] wants both to do the best possible work and also to reach the largest possible audience. The result is a fairly normal condition of discouragement.

[On the Irish:] Strange race ... Don't know what they want, but want it like the devil.

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.

Girls inevitably grew into women, but something of the boy persisted in every man.

Well, that was life. It was an old tree, and the old passed on. Probably they did not mind. There came a time when all sap ran slowly, and the peace of age with all things behind it merged easily into the peace of death. The difficult thing was to be young.

There is a point at which curiosity becomes unbearable, when it becomes an obsession, like hunger.