I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.

Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising.

Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation.

Successfully (whatever that may mean) or unsuccessfully, we all overact the part of our favorite character in fiction.

There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of sin and the fear of death the poets have eloquently spoken. They command the world's sympathy. But there are also discreditable anguishes, no less excruciating than the others, but of which the sufferer dare not, cannot speak. The anguish of thwarted desire, for example.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mean never losing your enthusiasm.

It takes a certain amount of intelligence and imagination to realize the extraordinary queerness and mysteriousness of the world in which we live.