It is the middle and pure height and whole of summer and a summer night, the held breath, of a planet's year; high shored sleeps the crested tide: what day of the month I do not know, which day of the week I am not sure, far less what hour of the night.

I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or "literary" diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive.

Dreiser's English is bum, yet it has a peculiar beauty and excellence. You feel you're reading a rather inadequate translation of a very great foreign novel-Russian, probably.

Seems as unfounded ... to say there isn't a God as to say there is.

God-doesn't-believe-in-the-easy-way.

He felt rather vainly sure that he did indeed look very nice, to her anyhow, and that was all he cared about.

... the ten thousand little things every day that a woman kept thinking of, on account of children.

... the unexplainable nighthawks you found in any fair-sized town.