“I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.”

From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional.

One must dare to be happy.

Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.

It is inevitable when one has a great need of something one finds it. What you need you attract like a lover.

War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers’ granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.

A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle.

It is extraordinary that when you are acquainted with a whole family you can forget about them.

The way to resume is to resume. It is the only way. To resume.

I have declared that patience is never more than patient. I too have declared, that I who am not patient am patient.

The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.

I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it.

Anyone who marries three girls from St Louis hasn’t learned much.

You have to learn to do everything, even to die.

The performance is silent. The readers hear the sounds of the words and the beat of the sentences only in their inner ear. Silent drummers on noiseless drums. An amazing performance in an amazing theater.

To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill.

It is a common sentence that knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

It’s strange how a word, a phrase, a sentence, can feel like a blow to the head.

If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent.

Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.

Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.