I know that I have in my make-up layers of synthetic experiences, and that the most powerful of my memories are only half true.

Dialogue must appear realistic without being so. Actual realism-the lifting, as it were, of passages from a stenographer's take-down of a 'real life' conversation-would be disruptive. Of what? Of the illusion of the novel. In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.

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

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

Jane Austen, much in advance of her day, was a mistress of the use of the dialogue. She used it as dialogue should be used-to advance the story; not only to show the characters, but to advance.

A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.

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