No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.

America is one long expectoration.

I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.

I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.

A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.

Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.

The worst of it is that I am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by taking my books away from me. It's perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite; with books my life would be livable -- any life.