Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.

Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.

I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.

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

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.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference. It pardons shortcomings, it consoles failure.