I'm a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.

Then she lay on her back and gazed at the cloudless sky. Mr. Beebe, whose opinion of her rose daily, whispered to his niece that that was the proper way to behave if any little thing went wrong.

There was something better in life than this rub­bish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .

What the world most needs today are negative virtues - not minding people, not being huffy, touchy, irritable or revengeful.

We may divide characters into flat and round.

Suspense: the only literary tool that has any effect upon tyrants and savages.

It is never possible for a novelist to deny time inside the fabric of his novel: he must cling, however lightly, to the thread of his story, he must touch the interminable tapeworm, otherwise he becomes unintelligible, which, in his case, is a blunder.