Think of all the really successful men and women you know. Do you know a single one who didn't learn very young the trick of calling attention to himself in the right quarters?

The gesture with which one generation guards the next is the movement, and the only time we see it clearly, of life itself.

You can't argue with a raging want. You can, but it is useless.

There is a stage in any misery when the victim begins to find a deep satisfaction in it.

When you talk of revolution ... you never talk of the day after.

Speaking the truth, once you have started it, is too exhilarating to draw back.

Writers sometimes talk as though they were the only friends of civilization. This is their conceit. But they have special powers to serve -- or to corrupt -- civilization, and are obliged to use them.