If I had had to write only about imaginary people, I would have had to close up my typewriter. I wrote about my life in less and less disguise as I grew older, and finally with no disguise - except the disguise we create for ourselves, which is self-deception.

Sometimes she goes out to work as a practical nurse, and comes home and sits by the kitchen table soaking her feet in a pan of hot water and Epsom salts. When she gets into bed and the springs creak under her weight, she groans with the pleasure of lying stretched out on an object that understands her so well.

Who knows what oversensitive is, considering all there is to be sensitive to.

Satin and lace and brown velvet and the faint odor of violets. That was all which was left to him of his love.

A writer is a reader who is moved to emulation.

Your reader is at least as bright as you are

A gentleman doesn't have one set of manners for the house of a poor man and another for the house of someone with an income incomparable to his own.