“If I should certainly say to a novice, ‘Write from experience and experience only,’ I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, ‘Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.’”

It led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression, where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and served to deepen the feeling of failure.

Excellence does not require perfection.

There’s no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.

A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.

Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.

It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?

I think I don’t regret a single “excess” of my responsive youth I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace.

I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say – feel for all you’re worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live.

We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art…what we are talking about and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered.

He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary.

Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!

The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself.

Judge everyone and everything for yourself.

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

Things are always different than what they might be…If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.

Be careful who you trust and tell your problems to.

Watch carefully the magic that occurs when you give a person enough comfort to just be themselves.

Be careful who you let into your circle. Not everyone deserves to be your friend.

Be careful of choosing people, most of them are not real.

Be careful what you wish for, Admiral. History is not always kind to its subjects.

Be careful not to choke on your aspirations.

You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.

Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.