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

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.

Biographers, by their very nature, want to know everything about everybody, dead or alive.

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

Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living.

One of the marks of true genius is a quality of abundance. A rich, rollicking abundance, enough to give indigestion to ordinary people. Great artists turn it out in rolls, in swatches. They cover whole ceilings with paintings, they chip out a mountainside in stone, they write not one novel but a shelf full. It follows that some of their work is better than other. As much as a third of it may be pretty bad. Shall we say this unevenness is the mark of their humanity - of their proud mortality as well as of their immortality?

In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink.