make no mistake about it, the detective-story is part of the literature of escape, and not of expression.

We cannot really look at the movement of the Spirit, just because It is the Power by which we do the looking.

the autobiography is at one and the same time a single element in the series of the writer's created works and an interpretation of the whole series.

I often think when a man's once past a certain age, the older he grows the tougher he gets, and women the same or more so.

you can give it a long name if you like, but I'm an old-fashioned woman and I call it mother-wit, and it's so rare for a man to have it that if he does you write a book about him and call him Sherlock Holmes.

To subdue one's self to one's own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one's self to other people's ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltness of those dead sea apples.

It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always something Much Worse... If I really wanted to be passionately embraced by Peter, I should dream of dentists or gardening. I wonder what unspeakable depths of awfulness can only be expressed by the polite symbol of Peter's embraces?