No one connected intimately with a writer has any appreciation of his temperament, except to think him overdoing everything.

This motion-picture muddle had distracted me from my writing.

Far away Tongariro! Green - white thundering Athabasca river of New Zealand! I vowed I would come again down across the Pacific to fish in the swift cold waters of this most beautiful and famous of trout streams. It is something to have striven. It is much to have kept your word.

I see so much more than I used to see. The effect has been to depress and sadden and hurt me terribly.

Writing was like digging coal. I sweat blood. The spell is on me.

Fishermen, no matter what supreme good fortune befalls them, cannot ever be absolutely satisfied. It is a fundamental weakness of intellect.

I confess that reading proofs is a pleasure. It stimulates and inspires me.