My doctor told me I should get out of breath three times a week, so I took up smoking.
The test of a good letter is a very simple one. If one seems to hear the other person talking as one reads, it is a good letter.
I have known some quite good people who were unhappy, but never an interested person who was unhappy.
Congenial labor is the secret of happiness.
Congenial labor is essence of happiness.
The moment that any life, however good, stifles you, you may be sure it isn't your real life.
One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.
To inquisitive minds like yours and mine the reflection that the quantity of human knowledge bears no proportion to the quantity of human ignorance must be in one view rather pleasing, viz. , that though we are to live forever we may be continually amused and delighted with learning something new.
I can't write a scene unless I've visualized it. Unless I can actually see it, and that's why a lot of reviewers have said my books are very cinematic, because I actually do see them before I write them.
I wanted to see if the American man in plain brown pants and a bare torso could speak profound things.
Sometimes in our relationship to another human being the proper balance of friendship is restored when we put a few grains of impropriety onto our own side of the scale.