Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure--wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.

He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.

On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy has given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had.

A man takes a drink, the drink takes another, and the drink takes the man.

You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.

If there is anything worse than the aching tedium of staring out of car windows, it is the irritation of getting tickets, packing, finding trains, lying in bouncing berths, washing without water, digging out passports, and fighting through customs. To live in Carlsbad is seemly and to loaf at San Remo healing to the soul, but to get from Carlsbad to San Remo is of the devil.

It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.