To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is...at last, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away.

And it was awfully strange, he thought, how she still had the power, as she came tinkling, rustling, still had the power as she came across the room, to make the moon, which he detested, rise at Bourton on the terrace in the summer sky.

In the 18th century we knew how everything was done, but here I rise through the air, I listen to voices in America, I see men flying- but how is it done? I can't even begin to wonder. So my belief in magic returns.

If we didn't live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I've no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged.

Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

It is the duty of the writer to describe.

We live in constant danger of coming apart. The mystery of why we do not always come apart is the animating tension of all art.