This is a free country. Folks have a right to send me letters, and I have a right not to read them.

It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.

It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless.

The only rule I have is to quit while it’s still hot. Never write yourself out. Always quit when it’s going good. Then it’s easier to take it up again. If you exhaust yourself, then you’ll get into a dead spell and you’ll have trouble with it.

The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn't have needed anyone since.

...It seems hard that a man in his need could be so flouted by a road.

And when I think about that, I think that if nothing but being married will help a man, he's durn nigh hopeless.