The artist's knowledge of his own creative nature is often unconscious; he pursues his mysterious way of life in a strange innocence.

But to Lord Peter the world presented itself as an entertaining labyrinth of side-issues

Do you solemnly swear never to conceal a vital clue from the reader? Do you promise to observe seemly moderation in the use of gangs, conspiracies, Super Criminals and Lunatics and utterly and forever to forswear Mysterious Poisons unknown to science? Will you honor the King's English? ... If you fail to keep your promise, may other writers steal your plots and your pages swarm with misprints.

It is impossible for human nature to believe that money is not there. It seems so much more likely that the money is there and only needs bawling for.

the heaviest restriction upon the freedom of public opinion is not the official censorship of the Press, but the unofficial censorship by a Press which exists not so much to express opinion as to manufacture it.

To start with invention is the mark of the fertile mind ... and leads later to the interpretation of experience; to start with the reproduction of experience is the infallible index of a barren invention.

There are times when one is tempted to say that the great, sprawling, lethargic sin of Sloth is the oldest and greatest of the sins and the parent of all the rest.