Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music.

You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is.

one of Mr. [Thomas] Hardy's ancestors must have married a weeping willow. There are pages and pages in his collected poems which are simply plain narratives in ballad form of how an unenjoyable time was had by all.

Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.

All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.

No one can write a best-seller by taking thought. The slightest touch of insincerity blurs its appeal. The writer who keeps his tongue in his cheek, who knows that he is writing for fools and that, therefore, he had better write like a fool, makes a respectable living out of serials and novelettes; but he will never make the vast, the blaring, half a million success. That comes of blended sincerity and vitality.

It is always one's virtues and not one's vices that precipitate one into disaster.