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.

I distrust Great Men... I believe in aristocracy, though... Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet... They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.

Our easiest approach to a definition of any aspect of fiction is always by considering the sort of demand it makes on the reader. Curiosity for the story, human feelings and a sense of value for the characters, intelligence and memory for the plot. What does fantasy ask of us? It asks us to pay something extra.

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

They cared for no one, they were outside humanity, and death, had it come, would only have continued their pursuit of a retreating horizon.

The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it.

You want to love everyone equally, and that's worse than impossible--it's wrong.