“Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth.”

Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is so easy to come by.

To live in Carlsbad is seemly and to loaf at San Remo healing to the soul, but to get from Carlsbad to San Remo is of the devil.

If there is anything worse than the aching tedium of staring out of car windows.

I have faith in Faith, I have reverence for all true Reverence.

I have for myself no conceivable complaint to make, and yet for American literature in general, and its standing in a country where industrialism and finance and science flourish and the only arts that are vital and respected are architecture and the film, I have a considerable complaint.

We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just wiser than you.’ For ten thousand years they’ve said that. We want our Utopia now — and we’re going to try our hands at it.

Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one’s business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse.

The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.

She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.

The one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love.

Don’t be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.

Funny how the world always praises its opera-singers so much and pays ’em so well and then starves its shoemakers, and yet it needs good shoes so much more than it needs opera–or war or fiction.

Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.

The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century.

Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure–wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.

I can not understand why ministers presume to deliver sermons every week at appointed hours because it is humanly impossible for inspirations to come with clock-like regularity

I grew up without a lot of money and my parents grew up with far less money. And that’s kept me in line. Really in line.

To become a token woman – whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters – is to become something less than a man.

Tweets are published in less than a second, Safari pages load in less than three seconds.

I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.

I take a lot less for granted.

I did a real boot camp once which with The Thin Red Line which was learning military exercises and this was far less strenuous.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

It doesn’t mean that I’m less girly, it just means that I have this other side of me.