The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes.
Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.
Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky.
In a few hours one could cover that incalculable distance; from the winter country and homely neighbours, to the city where the air trembled like a tuning-fork with unimaginable possibilities.
Most publishers, like most writers, are ruined by their successes.
The emptiness was intense, like the stillness in a great factory when the machinery stops running.
Loyal? As loyal as anyone who plays second fiddle ever is.
Personal hatred and family affection are not incompatible; they often flourish and grow strong together.
One may have staunch friends in one’s own family, but one seldom has admirers.
The sincerity of feeling that is possible between a writer and a reader is one of the finest things I know.
The higher processes are all processes of simplification. The novelist must learn to write, and then he must unlearn it; just as the modern painter learns to draw, and then learns when utterly to disregard his accomplishment, when to subordinate it to a higher and truer effect.
New things are always ugly.
We all like people who do things, even if we only see their faces on cigar-box lids.
Art, it seems to me, should simplify.
Thea was still under the belief that public opinion could be placated; that if you clucked often enough, the hens would mistake you for one of themselves.
No nation has ever produced great art that has not made a high art of cookery, because art appeals primarily to the senses.
I ain’t got time to learn. I can work like mans now.
On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice.
A creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.
In little towns, lives roll along so close to one another; loves and hates beat about, their wings almost touching.