What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both your fingers, until your fingers are broken?

Since that day, when people have spoken to me of "genius", I have felt the inside pocket to make sure my wallet's still there.

I don't want realism. I'll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth. I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!

Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.

The biggest of all differences in this world is between the ones that had or have pleasure in love and those that haven't and hadn't any pleasure in love, but just watched with sick envy.

I try to work every day because you have no refuge but writing. When you're going through a period of unhappiness, a broken love affair, the death of someone you love, or some other disorder in your life, then you have no refuge but writing.

How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.