“Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be in...”

“Awake and asleep the novel is with you, dogging your footsteps. Strange formless bits of material float out from the ether about you and attach themselves to the main body of the story as though th...”

“America rather, the United States seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warmhearted, overfriendly; quick-witted,...”

“I think that in order to write really well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion. Dislike, displeasure, resentment, fault-finding, imagination, passionate remonstrance, a sense...”

“But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and prophyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that.”

“Then there were long, lazy summer afternoons when there was nothing to do but read. And dream. And watch the town go by to supper. I think that is why our great men and women so often have sprung f...”

“Retain your peace by refusing to respond to rude, judgemental, or prying people. They won't understand anyway.”

“Even god doesn't propose to judge a man till his last days, why should you and I?”

“A true lady should have the wit and the imagination, or at least the very restraint, to express herself without resorting herself to such base vocabulary.”

“I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and al...”

“It would be one of those evenings when lady luck showed the bitchy streak in her nature”

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-de...”

“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?”

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”