Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.

'A friend,' he repeated, sentimental suddenly. 'Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can't really happen outside sleep.'

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

It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.

A novel is based on evidence, + or -x, the unknown quantity being the temperament of the novelist, and the unknown quantity always modifies the effect of the evidence, and sometimes transforms it entirely.

This element of surprise or mystery the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called is of great importance in a plot.

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