My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.

An author must be nothing if he do not love truth; a barrister must be nothing if he do.

When the ivy has found its tower, when the delicate creeper has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper.

Never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.

Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.

What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?

The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

When a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm.

In L.A., it's very hard to have some kind of conscience of some style out there. The weather's too hot; there's no seasons.

The folktale is the primer of the picture-language of the soul.

A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.

People enjoy our meat and our poultry, as I do as a consumer.

Sympathy is towards someone else, versus empathy, which is feeling like someone else.

The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting.

Those who think that it is easy to play chess are mistaken. During a game a player lives on his nerves, and at the same time he must be perfectly composed.

I'm not afraid to die on a treadmill.

Do you know what it's like to be the kind of girl that boys never talk to and then suddenly, a boy talks to you?