“Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he's only trying on one face after another till he finds his own.”

“There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.”

“What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.”

“Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.”

“What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thoughts; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. They would make my fortune if I could catch them; but always the rarest, those freaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.”

“Yes there is a meaning; at least for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.”

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”