Gossip is never fatal until it is denied. Gossip goes on about every human being alive and about all the dead that are alive enough to be remembered, and yet almost never does any harm until some defender makes a controversy. Gossip's a nasty thing, but it's sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

It was from his home in Maine that he and his wife Susannah establiBooth Tarkingtond their relation with nearby Colby College. in 1899 and a Litt. Tarkington made a gift of some his papers to Princeton University his alma mater and his wife Susannah who survived him by over 20 years made a separate gift of his remaining papers to Colby College after his death.

He is one of only three novelists (the others being William Faulkner and John Updike) to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once.