All disgrace smells alike. Differences in ruin are only matters of degree.

I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?

His smile bore the same relation to a real smile as false teeth do to real teeth.

To every man in the world there is one person of whom he knows little: whom he would never recognize if he met him walking down the street, whose motives are a mystery to him. That is himself.

... it is nearly impossible to understand those who are beyond our sight, who are not explained to us by ties of birth or the contact of the flesh.

God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.

All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.