Everything is very quiet, the streets are never crowded, and the people one dislikes are out of town.

One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or, worse still, when one betrays them does one realize their power.

Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking (because of its greater inner importance to the plot) than what they arrive at saying.

Reason can never reconcile one to life: nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.

Ghosts, we hope, may be always with us - that is, never too far out of the reach of fancy. On the whole, it would seem they adapt themselves well, perhaps better than we do, to changing world conditions - they enlarge their domain, shift their hold on our nerves, and, dispossessed of one habitat, set up house in another. The universal battiness of our century looks like providing them with a propitious climate.

rudeness to Mrs. Dosely was like dropping a pat of butter on to a hot plate - it slid and melted away.

I think the main thing, don't you, is to keep the show on the road.