A goose is a snake on stilts.

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.

Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.

Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.

Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.

The mind must move. When there is nothing to go forward to, it explores the past. The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.

They were always reading the law to her at home, which might not have been so bad if her father and mother had read from the same book.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

You make what seems to be a simple choice: Choose a man or a job or a neighborhood -- and what you have chosen is not a man or a job or a neighborhood, but a life.