If the ability to read carries the average man no higher than the gossip of his neighbours, if he asks nothing more nourishing out of books and the theatre than he gets hanging about the store, the bar and the street-corner, then culture is bound to be dragged down to him instead of his being lifted up by culture.

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.

The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.

I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.

Do you know-I hardly remembered you? Hardly remembered me? I mean: how shall I explain? I-it's always so. Each time you happen to me all over again.