nothing in life is more corroding than habit.

Writing was my real life and I was more at home with the people of my imagination than with the best I met in the objective world.

Never trust a woman who will not lie about her age after thirty. She is unwomanly and unhuman and there is no knowing what crimes she will commit.

The final result of too much routine is death in life.

Every leader of a great revolution is a fanatic and a Jesuit.

Success is a great healer.

The human mind has an infinite capacity for self-deception.

All women want to be understood until they understand themselves.

there is only one thing we do know and that is that we do not know anything.

the only revenge worth having is success.

... the irony of life is not that you cannot forget but that you can.

What a face this girl possessed!—could I not gaze at it every day I would need to recreate it through painting, sculpture, or fatherhood until a second such face is born.

The business of feeding people is the most amazing business in the world.

Put your shoulder to the wheel.

It's the old shell game.

Once upon a time, I did not live in Shady Pines. Once upon a time, my name was not Alice. Once upon a time, I didn't know how lucky I was.

Square cuts which ordinarily would have flashed to the boundary earned only two, and I believe that those two innings would have been worth 150 apiece in a county match.

As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the way it all changed. Living turned me into nothing.

Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.

[On the desert:] The wind was a constant, and when you paid attention, it seemed like the earth's own breathing.

After the war I was going to make up for lost time. But the time I spent away, it's still lost. No matter what I do, it stays lost.