every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works, yet we require critics to explain the one and biographers to expound the other. That time hangs heavy on people's hands is the only explanation of the monstrous growth.

Intellectual freedom depends upon material things.

But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.

There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

For such will be our ruin if you, in the immensity of your public abstractions, forget the private figure, or if we in the intensity of our private emotions forget the public world. Both houses will be ruined, the public and the private, the material and the spiritual, for they are inseparably connected.

Consolation for those moments when you can't tell whether you're the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.

As an experience, madness is terrific ... and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about.