“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”

“I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.”

“Action is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.”

“It’s not the load that breaks you down. It’s the way you carry it.”

“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”

“Objectivity, like the claim that one is nonpartisan or reasonable, is usually a defensive posture for those who fear involvement in the passions, partisanships, conflicts, and changes that make up life; they fear life. An ‘objective’ decision is generally lifeless. It is academic and the word ‘academic’ is a synonym for irrelevant.”

“In America, it’s far more shameful to owe money than it is to steal it.”

“Nature has given man one tongue, but two ears, that we may hear twice as much as we speak.”

“God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please; you can never have both.”

“A thriller is incomparably more arresting when it involves plausible people doing plausible things, rather than archetypes co-starring with animation.”

“The secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life, and in elevating them to art.”

“Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.”

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

“It is not the strongest of the species which survives, not the most intelligent, it is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

“An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.”

“It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

“For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity.”

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”