'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.'

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

Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.

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

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.

Characters must not brood too long. They must not waste time running up and down ladders in their own insides.

Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.