She loved him not only in spite of but because he himself was incapable of love.

'I never feel the need to discuss my work with anyone. No, I am too busy writing it. It has got to please me and if it does I don't need to talk about it. If it doesn't please me, talking about it won't improve it, since the only thing to improve it is to work on it some more. I am not a literary man but only a writer. I don't get any pleasure from talking shop.

It always takes a man that never made much at any thing to tell you how to run your business, though. Like these college professors without a whole pair of socks to his name, telling you how to make a million in ten years, and a woman that couldn't even get a husband can always tell you how to raise a family.

the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

She is like all the rest of them. Whether they are seventeen or fortyseven, when they finally come to surrender completely, it's going to be in words.

Women do have an affinity for evil, for believing that no woman is to be trusted, but that some men are too innocent to protect themselves.

A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.