Writing is the supreme solace.

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

Not with whom you are born, but with whom you are bred.

A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He does not say "My men were beaten " he says "I was beaten."

For one brief moment victory was within our grasp!" "And then the game started!

Every single day is a battle to stay strong.

If woman is inconstant, good, I am faithful to ebb and flow, I fall in season and now is a time of ripening.

The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.

I know now: I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything, I have freed myself from both the mind and the heart, I have mounted much higher, I am free .

Successful guilt is the bane of society

The hardest thing to do is work hard when no one is watching.

I don't think I'll ever be able to stay in one place for more than a year or two. It's not in my nature.