If you are flattering a woman, it pays to be a little more subtle. You don't have to bother with men, they believe any compliment automatically.

A gentleman ... sleeps at his work. That's what work's for. Why do you think they have the SILENCE notices in the library? So as not to disturb me in my little nook behind the biography shelves.

What I find interesting is how close you can run the laughter along the seam of seriousness, and occasionally cross it, so that half the house genuinely doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. Custard pie humour is fairly universal, but at the other end, which I'm more interested in, there's the humour that hovers on the darkness, that walks in the shadow of something else, not always that obvious.

I think of a plot, I think of an idea, and then I wonder, How can I get that onto the stage? . . . Whatever devices you use should always be there to serve the theme. If the theme has been overtaken by the device, then something's wrong.

As a writer one is allowed to have conversations with oneself. What is considered sane in writers is made for the rest of the human race.

Few women care to be laughed at and men not at all, except for large sums of money.

He really is terribly heavy going. Like running up hill in roller skates.