Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there — that, one might say, is created.

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.

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.

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

The trouble is you almost have to marry a man before you can find out the sort of wife he needs; and usually it's exactly the sort you are not.

We all like people who do things, even if we only see their faces on cigar-box lids.

Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.