Once somebody's aware of a plot, it's like a bone sticking out. If it breaks through the skin, it's very ugly.

Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself.

I don't give a damn what people think.

A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he is dull.

We were not as rich as the Rockefellers or Mellons, but we were rich enough to know how rich they were.

Only little boys and old men sneer at love.

A man can spend his whole existence never learning the simple lesson that he has only one life and that if he fails to do what he wants with it, nobody else really cares.

The only thing that keeps a man going is energy. And what is energy but liking life?

There is a charm, even for homely things, in perfect maintenance.

Great lovers have made great sacrifices.

Perfection irritates as well as it attracts, in fiction as in life.

The slowest kiss makes too much haste.

I die, as I have lived, a free spirit, an Anarchist, owing no allegiance to rulers, heavenly or earthly.

Have you ever come across something you couldn't explain?""Explain in what way? I could explain a ghost by saying, 'yes, that's a ghost.' I take it, that's not what you mean.

Tonight was a disappointing effort. I thought we competed the last three quarters but in the first quarter we did not compete, we participated, and that's not acceptable.

That's the great thing about being in the third grade. If you've got one polysyllabic adjective, everyone thinks you're a genius.

Most people believe, more or less, that the value of a human life is the same, irrespective of where on the planet it happens to find itself. But, of course, not every life has the same value for us.

I've participated in meetings where there were concerns by ethical experts. There is no clear solution.

I know who I am and what I do.

All the lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us if we are content to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess.

Every writer since the beginning of time, just like other people, has been afflicted by what a friend of mine calls