Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

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

Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.

Old people, who have felt blows and toil and known the world's hard hand, need, even more than children do, a woman's tenderness.

There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.

A creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

Dr. Howard Archie had just come up from a game of pool with the Jewish clothier and two traveling men who happened to be staying overnight in Moonstone.