You must not be profane, Ezra, without cause; or penny wise (no pun intended). Not to be in context where one belongs is misleading.

I am like Mariana in the moated grange and sit listening too often to the mouse in the wainscot.

For me it’s just a big fat ole Negro lie, meant to be told during cotton picking time over a water bucket full of corn, with a dipper passing back and forth at a good fast clip so that no one, not even the narrator himself, will realize how utterly preposterous the lie actually is…

I feel in America as you say you do in England—out of sympathy with everything…

The mere fact that a woman should treat me in so friendly a way was a great event in my life…

I can truthfully say that I know one thing about novel-writing: reconcile yourself to the routine of disappointments…

Do you want me to bring you an octopus, darling? There are several on hand.