There are two kinds of statistics the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

[A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.

The only thing I want is something I can't have; and that is to know if, 100 years from now, people will still buy my books.

I have a strong moral sense - by my standards.

Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.

Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.

Being broke is not a disgrace, it is only a catastrophe.

Every Sherlock Holmes story has at least one marvelous scene.

Sarcasm is not the rapier of wit its wielders seem to believe it to be, but merely a club: it may, by dint of brute force, occasionally raise bruises, but it never cuts or pierces.

The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold - if you have one.

I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.

Avarice is patriotic!

No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.

I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song.

I feel like I'm worried about my later years in life because I feel like I'm using up so much good karma right now. There's going to be some sort of karmic backlash somewhere down the road.

On great fields something stays.

(Grief) is something you never really get over, but you put it in a place inside you and deal with it in the way you have to.

The nicest thing about feeling happy is that you think you'll never be unhappy again.

If any man doth ascribe of salvation, even the very least, to the free will of man, he knoweth nothing of grace, and he hath not learnt Jesus Christ aright.

If I go 500 at-bats and hit 10 home runs, then something's wrong.

Insanity destroys reason, but not wit.