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.

My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.

Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety.

Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.

You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but not everything.

There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.

It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools.