I don't want anyone reading my writing to think about style. I just want them to be in the story.

Look at my papa here; he's been dead all these years, and yet he is more real to me than almost anybody else. He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult him all the time. The older I grow, the better I know him and the more I understand him.

Personal life becomes paler as the imaginative life becomes richer.

A child's attitude toward everything is an artist's attitude.

The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter.

The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska.

Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar.