“One mustn't criticize other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself”

“There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.”

“People talk about beautiful relationships between two persons of the same sex. What is the best of that sort as compared with the friendship of man and wife where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same? There is no place for comparison between the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine.”

“I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.”

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

“Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.”

“You meet people who forget you. You forget people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can't forget. Those are your 'friends”