We travel because we do not know. We know that we do not know the best before we start. That is why we start. But we forget that we do not know the worst either. That is why we come back.

Nearly everybody in San Francisco writes poetry. Few San Franciscans would admit this, but most of them would rather like to have their productions accidentally discovered.

There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of workers in the world, the people who do all the work, and the people who think they do all the work. The latter class is generally the busiest, the former never have time to be busy.

The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it.

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.

a committee, of course, exists for the purpose of damping enthusiasms.

always there is a sort of dream of air between you and the hills of California, a veil of unreality in the intervening air. It gives the hills the bloom that peaches have, or grapes in the dew.