I reckon if I ever marry, she will have to be a strong woman in a circus or something.
Don’t you think that as a people, Americans have less poetry, real poetry, in their souls than any other nations?
The sea-road is good for wanderers and landless men. There is quenching of thirst on the grey paths of the winds, and the flying clouds to still the sting of lost dreams.
I have no fear of the Hereafter. An orthodox hell could hardly be more torture than my life has been.
Coming, as I do, from mountain folk on one side and sea followers on the other, there are few old songs of the hills or the sea with which I am not familiar.
Every twinge of sensation, even of agony, was a negation of death.
All fled – all done, so lift me on the pyre – The Feast is over, and the lamps expire.
Break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.
Wits and swords are as straws against the wisdom of the Darkness...
For man’s only weapon is courage that flinches not from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions of Hell can stand.
I became a writer in spite of my environments.
But the idea of a man making his living by writing seemed, in that hardy environment, so fantastic that even today I am sometimes myself assailed by a feeling of unreality.
But whatever my failure, I have this thing to remember – that I was a pioneer in my profession, just as my grandfathers were in theirs, in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer.
I have not been a success, and probably never will be.
I have accomplished little enough, but such as it is, it is the result of my own efforts.
Civilization is a natural and inevitable consequence – whether good or evil I am not prepared to state.
A kingdom is not lost by a single defeat.
I don’t believe I ever saw an Oklahoman who wouldn’t fight at the drop of a hat – and frequently drop the hat himself.
What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie? I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky. The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing; Rush in and die, dogs – I was a man before I was a king.
Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars.