Watch for a wild boy of no particular clan, ready for anything, always armed. Prefers fighting to toil, drink to fighting, chasing women to booze or battle: may attempt all three concurrently.

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.

When we get more houses than we can live in, more cars than we can ride in, more food than we can eat ourselves, the only way of getting richer is by cutting off those who don't have enough.

Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.

Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.

A book, a true book, is the writer's confessional. For, whether he would have it so or not, he is betrayed, directly or indirectly, by his characters, into presenting publicly his innermost feelings.

Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.

... Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you.

For the masses who do the city's labor also keep the city's heart.

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.

The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.

Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere "opiate of the people" have a contempt for the rich, that is, for all mankind except the poor.

It's all about perseverance. Absolute perseverance. You can always get back up.

I pay a lot of attention to how things are done and the whole activity of building something is interesting.

You have to have enough respect for other human beings to leave their lives alone. If you admire that life, build it for yourself. Don't just try to come in and take somebody else's life.

Where I came from with the Twins, they were passionate about baseball. Through thick and thin, it was, 'Let's go.' It's something I have to get used to. I'm blocking it out as much as I can.

Well, I'm never happier than when I'm acting.

My Day Clothes are almost worne out...send the poor printer a few gammons, or some meal, some butter, cheese, poultry, etc.

One of the most puzzling things about a novel is that "the way it really was" half the time is, and half the time isn't, the way it ought to be in the novel.

Missionary zeal does not grow out of intellectual beliefs, nor out of theological arguments, but out of love.

It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.