“If they had said that the sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in creation than the words: Byron is dead!”

People who are so dreadfully “devoted” to their wives are so apt, from mere habit, to get devoted to other people’s wives as well.

Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.

The less one does, as I long ago observed, the less one can find time to do.

A fashionable wife! Oh! Never will I be anything so heartless! I have pictured for myself a far higher destiny than this. – Will it ever be more than a picture?

In spite of the honestest efforts to annihilate my I-ity, or merge it in what the world doubtless considers my better half, I still find myself a self-subsisting and alas! self-seeking me.

On earth the living have much to bear; the difference is chiefly in the manner of bearing, and my manner of bearing is far from being the best.

Homeopathy – an invention of the Father of Lies! I have tried it and found it wanting. I would swallow their whole doles medicine chest for sixpence, and be sure of finding myself neither better nor worse for it.

I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for.

The longer one lives in this hard world motherless, the more a mother’s loss makes itself felt.

Cracked things often hold out as long as whole things; one takes so much better care of them!

Young children are such nasty little beasts!

Not a hundredth part of the thoughts in my head have ever been or ever will be spoken or written — as long as I keep my senses, at least.

I rely on the promise, God is kind to women, fools, and drunk people.

The only thing that makes one place more attractive to me than another is the quantity of heart I find in it.

How many precious things do we not already possess which others have not – have hardly an idea of! Let us enjoy these, then, and bless God that we are permitted to enjoy them, rather than importune His goodness with vain longings for more.

All griefs, when there is no bitterness in them, are soothed down by time.

I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time.

It’s so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.

The blank page gives us the right to dream.

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

I advance all of my canvas at one time.

I am so tired of waking to the blank canvas of morning and realizing it won’t be painted with you.

I love to go down to the schoolyard and watch all the little children jump up and down and run around yelling and screaming. They don’t know I’m only using blanks.

I like Stallone, because he writes. He sits down with a blank page and comes up with another Rambo movie. That isn’t very easy for anybody. He’s made it successful on top of that.