Why, after all, should readers never be harrowed? Surely there is enough happiness in life without having to go to books for it.

On lady novelists: As artists they're rot, but as providers they're oil wells; they gush. Norris said she never wrote a story unless it was fun to do. I understand Ferber whistles at her typewriter.

Authors and actors and artists and such - Never know nothing, and never know much.

The definition of eternity is two people and a ham.

Then if my friendships break and bend, There's little need to cry The while I know that every foe Is faithful till I die.

Nevil Shute's On the Beach is no Christmas carol, but it seems to me a remarkably fine novel, one which I read, in the peculiarly repulsive phrase, with my eyes glued to the page.

Where unwilling dies the rose; buds the new another year.