Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes, and always count their change when it is handed to them.

Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.

Chamber music - a conversation between friends.

In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.

A woman's biography - with about eight famous historical exceptions - so often turns out to be the story of a man and the woman who helped his career.

There is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual.

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.