Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. ... For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes, it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.

She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses but in all my garden there is no red rose.

Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.

It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.