To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

It was strange to have no self-to be like a little boy left alone in a big house, who knew that now he could do anything he wanted to do, but found that there was nothing that he wanted to do.

So there was not an "I" anymore-not a basis on which I could organize my self-respect-save my limitless capacity for toil that it seemed I possessed no more.

If all your clothes are worn to the same state, it means you go out too much.

I just couldn't make the grade as a hack-that, like everything else, requires a certain practiced excellence.

Premature success gives one an almost mystical conception of destiny as opposed to will power-at its worst the Napoleonic delusion.

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

I suspect tragedy in the American countryside because all the people capable of it move to the big towns at twenty.

I don't much care where I am anymore, nor expect very much from places.

Your first most typical figure in any new place turns out to be a bluff or a local nuisance.