I, myself, was always recognized . . . as the “slow one” in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was . . . an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day.

Assumptions are dangerous things.

Elephants can remember, but we are human beings and mercifully human beings can forget.

You don't realize what fine fighting material there is in age. ... You show me any one who's lived to over seventy and you show me a fighter - some one who's got the will to live.

To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious.

I admit," I said, "that a second murder in a book often cheers things up." - Hastings

If we seek to keep the past alive, we end, I think, by distorting it.