Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.

Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life-that's the stimulant for a story writer.

To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.

She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).

You can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife till she's joined a woman's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.

A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.