I was never allowed to read the popular American children's books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author's knowing it.

His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.

The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have lost.

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.

Her failure was a useful preliminary to success.

And all the while, I suppose," he thought, "real people were living somewhere, and real things happening to them.