If art has a purpose, it is to interpret life, reproduce it in fresh visions.

Chamber music - a conversation between friends.

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.

Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living.

What the writer needs is an empty day ahead.

Biographers, by their very nature, want to know everything about everybody, dead or alive.

History is, in its essence, exciting; to present it as dull is, to my mind, stark and unforgivable misrepresentation.

Artists often think they are going to die before their time. They seem to possess a heightened sense of the passing of the hours.

In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink.

There is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual.

Fear not! I would rather tear the heart from your bosom than take your bow, for I believe you would miss it less.

Religion, which never intervenes directly in the government of American society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions

I got by as a musician since day one. I don't live beyond my means. I have real cheap tastes.

Being willing to delay pleasure for a greater result is a sign of maturity.

At this late hour a wagon has been procured, and I have had it filled with plate and the most valuable portable articles, belonging to the house.

War is the father of all things.

Every human being is a mixture of light and darkness, trust and fear, love and hate.

You have to be prepared for people to hate you. Average people love to be average, because nobody bothers them.

My habit of glorifying things far away in space and time, also contributed to my social isolation.

Less isn't more; just enough is more.