He (The Agent) just takes ten per cent of your life.

The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself out. He stays around forever, not only for as long as you can write anything that anyone will buy, but as long as anyone will buy any portion of any right to anything that you ever did write. He just takes ten per cent of your life.

They write them long because they can't write them short.

She was the music heard faintly on the edge of sound.

It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.

I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won't let himself get snotty about it.

All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.