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.

History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.

There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.

Turn up the lights. I don't want to go home in the dark.

Be always decent and right in your home town; and when you're on the road, never take more than four glasses of beer a day or play higher than a twenty-five-cent limit.

If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another's.

He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather.