A sense of humor is so handy, isn't it? It lets you see both sides of a question so that you never need do anything.

But to write - that is grief and labor; and to read what one has written - how unlike the story as one saw it; how dull, how spirtless - that is enough to send one weeping to bed.

We each live in a private, distorted, individual world - stars turning in space, warmed for a moment by each other's light, then lost in infinite distance.

the damned book I am writing is like the driveling of a weak-kneed sea calf. If I were sufficiently strong minded, I should tear it up an start again. But I don't.

What a strange distance there is between ill people and well ones.

Life flows on over death as water closes over a stone dropped into a pool. ... Fate is certain; death is certain; but the courage and nobility of men and women matter more than these.

I like a bit of color myself, I must say. At my time of life, if you wear nothing but black, people might think you were too mean to change frocks between funerals.