“I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered-- about her teeth, for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life.”

“Pittsburgh was even more vital, more creative, more hungry for culture than New York. Pittsburgh was the birthplace of my writing.”

“Miracles surround us at every turn, if we but sharpen our perceptions to them.”

“Constant comparisons are the stamp of the foreigner; one continually translates manners and customs of a new country into terms of his own, before he can fully comprehend them.”

“The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.”

“What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.”

“The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.”

“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”

“Where there is great love, there are always wishes.”

“All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.”

“That is happiness to be dissolved into something complete and great.”