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.

If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good

Every person who has ever lived has lived an unbroken succession of unique occasions.

you have to love life to have life, and you need to have life to love life

Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.

I have inherited this burden of superstition and nonsense. I govern innumerable men but must acknowledge that I am governed by birds and thunderclaps

All that we know about those we have loved and lost is that they would wish us to remember them with a more intensified realization of their reality. What is essential does not die but clarifies. The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.