Romance was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes.

There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty toward him, although, being very shy and a throughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym.

The first meal in Spain was always a shock with the hors d'oeuvres, an egg course, two meat courses, vegetables, salad, and dessert and fruit.

The English talked with inflected phrases. One phrase to mean everything.

I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardness in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.

The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.

Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

Someone just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.