There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.

Greenwich Village... the village of low rents and high arts.

Bolivar cannot carry double

We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us.

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.

Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.

There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavor of life until he has known poverty, love, and war.

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!

A holiday in a new dress—can earth offer anything more enchanting?

By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed.

It'll be a great place if they ever finish it.

All great men have declared that they owe their sucess to the aid and encouragement of some brilliant woman.

Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some silly theory of gravitation.

If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.

This fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul ... its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs.

It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York.

East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.

When a man begins to be hilarious in a sorrowful way you can bet a million that he is dyeing his hair.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.

If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another's.

She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).

Most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another.

She had become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed.

I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.

There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference.

It was beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.

Turn up the lights. I don't want to go home in the dark.

To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.

Write what you like; there is no other rule.

There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.

I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lamp posts and newspaper stands.

You can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife till she's joined a woman's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.

Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.

Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.

I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

No friendship is an accident.

Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.

A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.

If a person has lived through war, poverty and love, he has lived a full life

It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.

We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.

The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.

The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship while removing one's gloves.

All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another's presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best

There is no well defined boundary line between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in the one domain and sometimes in the other.

Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life-that's the stimulant for a story writer.

I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.