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.

There is no doubt that sorrow brings one down in the world. The aristocratic privilege of silence belongs, you soon find out, to only the happy state- or, at least, to the state when pain keeps within bounds.

Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.

The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling.

The silence of a shut park does not sound like country silence: it is tense and confined.

... in nine out of ten cases the original wish to write is the wish to make oneself felt[ellipsis in source] the non-essential writer never gets past that wish.