Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.

Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.

Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.

If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.

... artists were intended to be an ornament to society. As a society in themselves they are unthinkable.

It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home.

Love of privacy - perhaps because of the increasing exactions of society - has become in many people almost pathological.