O. Henry Quotes

I see the game now. You can't write with ink, and you can't write with your own heart's blood, but you can write with the heart's blood of some one else. You have to be a cad before you can be an artist.

O’Henry 'The Plutonian Fire' (1905)

In time truth and science and nature will adapt themselves to art. Things will happen logically, and the villain be discomfited instead of being elected to the board of directors. But in the meantime fiction must not only be divorced from fact, but must pay alimony and be awarded custody of the press despatches.

He studied cities as women study their reflections.

But in the case of human beings, friendship is a transitory art, subject to discontinuance without further notice.

Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the other. We often hear “shop-girls” spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as “marriage-girls.

Give me a cuckoo clock and a Sep Winner's Self-Instructor for the Banjo, and I'll join you.

She is pale but affectionate, clinging to his arm — always clinging to his arm. Any one can see that she is a peach and of the cling variety.

If ever there was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, called New York.

But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

Take it from me — he's got the goods.

Love and large-hearted giving, when added together, can leave deep marks.It is never easy to cover these marks, dear friends — never easy.

No pretendía ser un sabio, pero había bebido hasta emborracharse en el manantial de la sabiduría.

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.

Pull up the shades so I can see New York. I don't want to go home in the dark.

"She thrusts hurriedly into your hand an extremely hot buttered roll, flashes out a tiny pair of scissors, snips off the second button of your overcoat, meaningly ejaculates the one word, "parallelogram!" and swiftly flies down a cross street, looking back fearfully over her shoulder. That"