The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.

Reverence is fatal to literature.

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted—Balder, Persephone—but [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them.

This element of surprise or mystery — the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called — is of great importance in a plot. It occurs through a suspension of the time-sequence; a mystery is a pocket in time, and it occurs crudely, as in "Why did the queen die?" and more subtly in half-explained gestures and words, the true meaning of which only dawns pages ahead. Mystery is essential to a plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence.

. . . life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which . . .

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.