If you confront anyone who has lied with the truth, he will usually admit it - often out of sheer surprise. It is only necessary to guess right to produce your effect.

It is odd how, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by someone else will rouse you to a fury of denial.

It had come about ex­act­ly in the way things hap­pened in books.

Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or examining a hat shop… suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.

People who can be very good can be very bad too.

The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation.

Money ... is always the great clue to what is happening in the world.