Thea was still under the belief that public opinion could be placated; that if you clucked often enough, the hens would mistake you for one of themselves.

Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.

Let people go on talking as they like, and we will go on living as we think best.

The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me. In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions... I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen again.

This land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces.

Nothing mattered ... but writing books, and living the kind of life that made it possible to write them.

The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity.