That living specimen of gall and hatred, that individual.

The curse of God must have been on our people when we chose him out of so many noble sons of the South, who would have carried us safely through this Revolution.

Now, gentlemen, let tomorrow be their Waterloo!

The enemy has assailed my outposts in heavy force. I have fallen back on the line of Bull Run and will make a stand at Mitchell's Ford.

He suddenly saw the enterprise of literature as essentially mad.

Original sin is a very commercial idea, ” said Duyckinck. “How do you think the Bible stays in print year after year?

Melville to Hawthorne: "In your stories, you seem to understand that the dramatic moments come not when a character must choose between right and wrong buy when he must choose between two wrongs.

Destroying oneself, he thought ruefully, should always be done at a deliberate pace.

Ô, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth.

If you aren't living in the reality of your dream, you surely haven't given it your possible best.

What I really want to tell him is to pick up that baby of his and hold her tight, to set the moon on the edge of her crib and to hang her name up in the stars.

I was awarded 'Most Aggressive Rider of the Day', generally given to the most spectacular loser of the day.

The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.

Now and then, when I look round on my books, they seem to waver as if a wind rippled their solid mass, and another world were about to break through.

I've developed a stiff neck that's about to drive me insane.

Any idiot can get on a treadmill and watch TV and then take great pride in the fact they've ‘exercised.

It's fun to be in California. The police are kind of weird here. They ask you stupid questions. 'Do you know why I pulled you over?' Because I have pot in the glove compartment?

There is something almost cruel about the Christian's being placed in a world which in every way wants to pressure him to do the opposite of what God bids him to do.