In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.

Though the Jazz Age continued it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the elders.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.

I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds, they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

The victor belongs to the spoils.

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

Forgotten is forgiven.

Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.