[Mark Twain] is still the rough, awkward, good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands when he was three years old. Thoroughly likeable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters.

Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing.

A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.

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

I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered –about her teeth for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things she had lost, *but whose inner glow has faded*. Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life.

The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstasy has no fear of death.

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.