Write a novel if you must, but think of money as an unlikely accident. Get your reward out of writing it, and try to be content with that.

Religion was their meat and their excitement, their mental food and their emotional pleasure.

The rich are always afraid.

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

It is better to be first with an ugly woman than the hundreth with a beauty.

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

For war to man, like childbirth to women, is simplifying in its emotions and activities. All the real problems of life can be put aside while the one thing is done and little thought is needed to do it. ... His hatreds can be expressed without censure, he can let his emotions run free, he can behave as dramatically, as heroically as he likes, and no one laughs at him. It is almost impossible for a man to behave heroically in the cool and ordinary times of peace. But in war anything is allowed him, he is praised and applauded and made much of, as women are excused and allowed for in pregnancy.