The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself

Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire.

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

I knew that nobody but a luckless man could ever need a doctor in the face of a cyclone.

That's the one trouble with this country: everything, weather, all, hangs on too long. Like our rivers, our land: opaque, slow, violent; shaping and creating the life of man in its implacable and brooding image.

The writer has three sources: imagination, observation, and experience