The only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost.

Try to be better than yourself.

A hack writer who would have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tried out a few of the old proven 'sure-fire' literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.

I imagine as long as people will continue to read novels, people will continue to write them, or vice versa; unless of course the pictorial magazines and comic strips finally atrophy man's capacity to read, and literature really is on its way back to the picture writing in the Neanderthal cave.

The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune

It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.