Every writer is necessarily a critic - that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg - nine-tenths of him is under water.

The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.

[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.

Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.

That's the advantage of having lived sixty-five years. You don't feel the need to be impatient any longer.

A good writer preserves an air of freedom in his prose, so that the reader won't know how a story will end - even if he's reading a history book.

Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.