“I’ll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.”

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving!

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

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

O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

Write what you like; there is no other rule.

Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.

What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?

If a person has lived through war, poverty and love, he has lived a full life.

The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.

Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow’s grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature.

Bride knoweth bride at the glance of an eye. And between them swiftly passes comfort and meaning in a language that man and widows wot not of.

There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old age; youth’s burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same.

I’ve got some of my best yarns from park benches, lamp posts and newspaper stands.

This fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs.

He studied cities as women study their reflections.

There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.