Satisfaction, even after one has dined well, is not so interesting and eager a feeling as hunger.

if you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago. ... you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation; sentimemnt falls to sentimentality - you can write about life, but never write life itself.

There's some herb that's good for everybody, except for them that thinks they're sick when they ain't.

A lean sorrow is hardest to bear.

When she walked...she stretched out long and thin like a little tiger, and held her head high to look over the grass as if she were treading the jungle.

Conversation's got to have some root in the past, or else you've got to explain every remark you make, an' it wears a person out.

Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.