“Nothing is more painful to me than the disdain with which people treat second-rate authors, as if there were room only for the first-raters.”

“The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but the first-rate writer can only be experience. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysis that makes him first-rate.”

“The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. A second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. A first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.”

“If it was true that all effort led to a vast abyss, she had two recommendations to begin with, first, not to cheat people, and, second, to treat them properly. Beyond that, there was room for discussion.”

“Nothing is as important as dancing. . . . Better a fourth-rate dancer than a first-rate anything else.”

“I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.”