...there must be something she wanted; and that therefore she was no lady.

No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life--the first twenty years of it--had about them something semi-fictitious.

The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet - when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.

No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.

Education is not so important as people think.

But complex people are never certain that they are not crooks, never certain their passports are quite in order, and are, therefore, unnerved by the slightest thing.

The passion of vanity has its own depths in the spirit, and is powerfully militant.