“When I see a shipwreck, I like to know what caused the disaster. I learned nothing but the glow that wrapped her face when the soup came. That’s the story.”

If you can’t write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

It’s said that love makes the world go around. Let me tell you, the announcement lacks verification. It’s the wind from the dinner horn that does it.

Except in streetcars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.

Turn up the lights. I don’t want to go home in the dark.

We can’t buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.

Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.

If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another’s.

It was beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.

To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.

Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr’s.

We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us.

If man knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they’d never marry.

Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.

There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavor of life until he has known poverty, love, and war.

Those whom we first love we seldom marry.

There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference.

Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.

If you know what you want, you will recognize it when you see it.

When I scramble and do those things, I try to look downfield, look for the playmakers, put it in their hands, and let them make all the big plays happen.

You want to be in the first round. That’s the dream. That’s what you see on draft night.

For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.

I am in charge of my own spaceship. It’s my up, my down. I could choose to see this situation as a setback or a starting point.

Wickedness also resides in the gaze that perceives itself as innocent and surrounded by wickedness.