Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. Courage is grace under pressure. Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination. Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts. Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth. For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit's foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit's foot long ago and the bones and the sinews were polished by the wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there. If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work. God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers. Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports ... all others are games. | 
