Sins cut boldly up through every class in society, but mere misdemeanours show a certain level in life.

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

whenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish.

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.

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

Spoilt pleasure is a sad, unseemly thing; you can only bury it.

I can't see or feel the conflict between love and religion. To me, they're the same thing.