I thank God daily for the good fortune of my birth, for I am certain I would have made a miserable peasant.

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

Perhaps that suspicion of fraud enhances the flavor.

The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance.

I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this.

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

Novel writing wrecks homes.