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Write what you like; there is no other rule.

O. Henry

East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.
O. HENRY

Ethnicity Identity Race State
It gives men courage and ambition and the nerve for anything. It has the colour of gold, is clear as a glass and shines after dark as if the sunshine were still in it.
O. HENRY

Ambition Color Courage Darkness Man Sunshine
If you can’t write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.
O. HENRY

Forget Please Story Writing Yourself
This fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs.
O. HENRY

Fair Move Soul Wire
If a person has lived through war, poverty and love, he has lived a full life.
O. HENRY

Life Live Person Poverty War
My advice to you, if you should ever be in a hold up, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you.
O. HENRY

Advice Benefit Brave Coward Hold Yourself
A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.
O. HENRY

Art Himself Respect Time
If man knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they’d never marry.
O. HENRY

Man Marriage Pass Time Woman
It was beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.
O. HENRY

Beautiful Greatness Simplicity True
To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.
O. HENRY

Herself Impossible Love Power Quite Relationship Woman Worship
Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your enemy passes your way, you must feed him before you shoot him.
O. HENRY

Country Enemy Hospital Pass Praise Yourself
When a man begins to be hilarious in a sorrowful way you can bet a million that he is dyeing his hair.
O. HENRY

Beginning Hilarious Man Sorrow
Whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines.
O. HENRY

Beginning Count Funeral Medicine Myself Patience Power
In the Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out.
O. HENRY

Anand Thakur
He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather.
O. HENRY

Clear Himself Sunshine Weather
Men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat – seamy on both sides.
O. HENRY

Appearance Life Man Side
Women’s weapon, water-drops.
O. HENRY

Tears Weapon Woman
The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.
O. HENRY

Journey Mystery Soul World
Be always decent and right in your home town; and when you’re on the road, never take more than four glasses of beer a day or play higher than a twenty-five-cent limit.
O. HENRY

Decent Home Limitation Right Yourself
We can’t buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.
O. HENRY

Cash Live People Time
By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed.
O. HENRY

Addiction Choice Discover Eat Habit Nature Place
A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.
O. HENRY

Creativity Pill Story
It ain’t the roads we take; it’s what’s inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.
O. HENRY

Ourselves Road Travel Way
I’ve got some of my best yarns from park benches, lamp posts and newspaper stands.
O. HENRY

Lamp Myself Stand
Each of us, when our day’s work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.
O. HENRY

Book Day Ideal Seek Silence Work
Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.
O. HENRY

Animal Communication Human Talk Together
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
O. HENRY

Domination Down Moral Reflection Smile

Write what you like; there is no other rule.

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Write what you like; there is no other rule.

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