When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.
What a wonderful thing a woman is. I can admire what they do even if I don’t understand why.
What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately.
We’ve got so many laws you can’t breathe without breaking something.
We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.
Victor’s unfortunate choice it was always to mis-see, to mis-hear, to misjudge.
To be alive at all is to have scars.
There’s nobody as lonely as an all-married man.
There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.
The word is a symbol and a delight which sucks up men and scenes, trees, plants, factories, and Pekinese. Then the Thing becomes the Word and back to Thing again, but warped and woven into a fantastic pattern.
The misery stayed, not thought about but aching away, and sometimes I would have to ask myself, Why do I ache? Men can get used to anything, but it takes time.
The good story lay in half-told things which must be filled in out of the hearer’s own experience.