I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands mo...ment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for--whether it's a field, or a home, or a country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself, "Oh, now I've got myself into an awful mess...; I wish I were sitting quietly at home." And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Uncle Charlie: The cities are full of women, middle-aged widows, husbands dead, husbands who've spent their lives making fortunes,... working and working. And then they die and leave their money to their wives, their silly wives. And what do the wives do, these useless women? You see them in the hotels, the best hotels, every day by the thousands. Drinking the money, eating the money, losing the money at bridge. Playing all day and all night. Smelling of money. Proud of their jewelry but of nothing else. Horrible. Faded, fat, greedy women. Charlie (his niece): They're alive. They're human beings! Uncle Charlie: Are they? Are they, Charlie? Are they human or are they fat, wheezing animals? Hmmm? And what happens to animals when they get too fat and too old?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you rip the fronts off houses you'd fi...nd swine? The world is a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with persons more or less in the a...rts. He lives among them, eats among them, quarrels with them, marries them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every writer is necessarily a critic--that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each... selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on.... The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg--nine-tenths of him is under water.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are out...growing, or trying to reshape.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was ...nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve hi...m in winning through to his way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calcu...lated spontaneity are in winning what they want.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »