Man who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

What I did have, which others perhaps didn't, was a capacity for sticking at it, which really is the point, not the talent at all. You have to stick at it.

In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

The critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms.

It can be considered a rule that the probable duration of an Empire may be prognosticated by the degree to which its rulers believe in their own propaganda.

The most exciting periods of literature have always been those when the critics were great.

There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.