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

Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the first half of a novel, the unpredictability should be the more striking. In the second half, the inevitability should be the more striking.

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

in my experience one thing you don't learn from is anything anyone set up to be a lesson; what you are to know you pick up as you go along.

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.

Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

Style is the thing that's always a bit phony, and at the same time you cannot write without style.