I couldn't regard myself as personally repulsive. No man can, or, if he ever comes to do so, that is the end of him.

Higher than the beasts, lower than the angels, stuck in our idiot Eden.

And it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me.

The object of the novelist is to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the fact that the author exists - even of the fact he is reading a book.

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.

If you're going to have a character appear in a story long enough to sell a newspaper, he'd better be real enough that you can smell his breath.

What the artist wishes to do — as far as you are concerned — is to take you out of yourself. As far as he is concerned, he wishes to express himself.

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.

Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.

Pride and reserve are not the only things in life; perhaps they are not even the best things. But if they happen to be your particular virtues you will go all to pieces if you let them go.

The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!

Now who is wrong and who is right about the dating advice?

She is a beauty. She is a challenge. She is the earth. She is the nature.She is the power that keeps the balance of this world. Respect her wisdom and be intimidated by her power.

The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.

God is the Creator; Satan is the counterfeiter.

The crucial people to get your product started for the first 6 months are not who will be using it 3 years later.

For who would live if life held no allurements?

Music is the softest cushion in the world.

Intellect confuses intuition.

Yes, long hours and a hard life for my parents, but for a six to seven year old every new day dawned with fresh excitement when you have not a care in the world, and so much to learn and witness.

To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it "the way it really was"...It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.