I did not ask for objections, but for comments, or helpful suggestions. I looked for more loyalty from you, Captain Hornblower.' That made the whole argument pointless. If Leighton only wanted servile agreement there was no sense in continuing.

I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea.

When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.

I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.

A whim, a passing mood, readily induces the novelist to move hearth and home elsewhere. He can always plead work as an excuse to get him out of the clutches of bothersome hosts.

There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.

A man who writes for a living does not have to go anywhere in particular, and he could rarely afford to if he wanted.