His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.

If we could only learn to look on evil as evil, whether it's clothed in filth or monotony or magnificence.

I avoided writers very carefully because they can perpetuate trouble as no one else can.

Understand now, I'm purely a fiction writer and do not profess to be an earnest student of political science, but I believe strongly that such a law as one prohibiting liquor is foolish, and all the writers, keenly interested in human welfare whom I know, laugh at the prohibition law.

I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

Under the glass porte-cochère of a theatre Amory stood, watching the first great drops of rain splatter down and flatten to dark stains on the sidewalk. The air became grey and opalescent; a solitary light suddenly outlined a window over the way; then another light; then a hundred more danced and glimmered into vision. Under his feet a thick, iron-studded skylight turned yellow; in the street the lamps of the taxicabs sent out glistening sheens along the already black pavement. The unwelcome November rain had perversely stolen the day__ last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence, the night.