“going to have an industrial society you must have places that will look terrible. Other places you set aside—to say, ‘This is the way it was.’ ”

“If you want to catch beasts you don't see every day,You have to go places quite out of the way,You have to go places no others can get to.You have to get cold and you have too get wet, too.”

“Every man must have a peaceful place to contemplate. If you do not have such a place, you must find one!”

“When you come to a place where you have to left or right,' says Sister Ruth, 'go straight ahead.”

“If you are a success in life, there are places you must go and pay to be humiliated. It is an unwritten law that human beings must be tormented throughout their lives in one way or another. If you are fortunate enough to have risen to a social level where no one does it to you for free, then you must pay for the service. ”

“I was recently asked what it takes to become a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one must cultivate incompetence at almost every other form of profitable work. This must be accompanied, second, by a haughty contempt for all the forms of work that one has established that one cannot do. To these two must be joined, third, the nuttiness to believe that other people can be made to care about your opinions and views and be charmed by the way you state them. Incompetence, contempt, lunacy--once you have these in place, you are set to go.”