“the two girls emanated an incorrigible idle inertia.”

“Idleness breeds our better virtues.”

“What he was now seeing was the street lonely, savage, and cool. That was it: cool; he was thinking, saying aloud to himself sometimes, “I better move. I better get away from here.”But something held him, as the fatalist can always be held: by curiosity, pessimism, by sheer inertia.”

“It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.”

“War and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy.”

“It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end.”

“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.”