One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.
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Advertising is a racket...its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.
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Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.
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There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind.
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There was another silence, while Marjorie considered whether or not convincing her mother was worth the trouble. People over forty can seldom be permanently convinced of anything. At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.
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The test of a first-fate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
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Boredom is not an end product, is comparatively rather an early stage in life and art. You've got to go by or past or through boredom, as through a filter, before the clear product emerges.
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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.
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At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; At 45 they are caves in which we hide.
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Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.
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He waited for the mask to drop off, but at the same time he did not question her right to wear it.
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At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look At 45 they are caves in which we hide.
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I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
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Optimism is the content of small men in high places.
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The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
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In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.
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Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind.
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What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.
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The faces of most American women over thirty are relief maps of petulant and bewildered unhappiness.
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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.
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Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.
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No such thing as a man willing to be honest --that would be like a blind man willing to see.
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I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last; a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald is the first of the last generation.
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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.
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Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.
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To write it, it took three months; to conceive it – three minutes; to collect the data in it – all my life.
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Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.
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There are no second acts in American lives.
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