Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
It requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest.
When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.
I’d sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
Have common sense and stick to the point.
Tolerance is another word for indifference.
If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice.
I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.