Love itself draws on a woman nearly all the bad luck in the world

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away.

If you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago.

There is often a good deal of the child left in people who have had to grow up too soon.

Alexandra sighed. "I have a feeling that if you go away, you will not come back. Something will happen to one of us, or to both. People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find. What I have is yours if you care enough about me to take it.

Only solitary men know the full joys of frienship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything.

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.