There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.

The nature of happiness is such that happiness retreats the more intensely you pursue it.

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

Money, it is often said, does not bring happiness; it must be added, however, that it makes it possible to support unhappiness with exemplary fortitude.

The women we really love are the women who complete us, who have the qualities we can borrow and so become something nearer to whole men. Just as we complete them, of course; it’s not a one-way thing. Leola and I, when romance was stripped away, were too much alike; our strengths and weaknesses were too nearly the same. Together we would have doubled our gains and our losses, but that isn’t what love is.