“Well, I had often pondered all this, not without an intense longing sometimes to turn to and do something real for once, to be seriously and responsibly active instead of occupying myself forever with nothing but esthetics and intellectual and artistic pursuits. It always ended, however, in resignation, in surrender to destiny.”

“From my boyhood I have had an intense and overwhelming conviction that my real vocation lay in the direction of literature. I have, however, had a most unaccountable difficulty in getting any responsible person to share my views.- Cyprian Overbeck Wells: A Literary Mosaic”

“I do wish he would sometimes be serious. I cannot get him to write or speak in real, solid earnest. I don't much mind it now, but if it be always so, what shall I do with the serious part of myself?”

“True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.”

“Sometimes I shield myself from finding out what's really going on with people for fear I'll be held responsible. Because with information often comes responsibility; if we know, we might be required to do something”

“Reading . . . is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.”