How subtle is the relationship between the traveler and his luggage! He knows, as no one else knows, its idiosyncrasies, its contents ... and always some small nuisance which he wishes he had not brought; had known, indeed, before starting that he would regret it, but brought it all the same.

A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even a solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it.

I do not like January very much. It is too stationary. Not enough happens. I like the evidences of life, and in January there are too few of them.

that pathetic short-cut suggested by Nature the supreme joker as a remedy for our loneliness, that ephemeral communion which we persuade ourselves to be of the spirit when it is in fact only of the body - durable not even in memory!

Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel.

See the last orange roses, how they blow / Deeper and heavier than in their prime, / In one defiant flame before they go.

One must be businesslike, although the glass is falling.