A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

I learned little save that most of the deeds, good and bad both, incurring opprobrium or plaudits or reward either, within the scope of man's abilities, had already been performed and were to be learned about only from books.

Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; he is a Kentuckian too.

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.

It's terrible to be young. It's terrible. Terrible

He thought that it was loneliness which he was trying to escape and not himself. But the street ran on: catlike, one place was the same as another to him. But in none of them could he be quiet. But the street ran on in its moods and phases, always empty: he might have seen himself as in numberless avatars, in silence, doomed with motion, driven by the courage of flagged and spurred despair; by the despair of courage whose opportunities had to be flagged and spurred.

We could live like counts. ... If all that money is out there, I might as well hack a little on the side and put the novel off.