But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.

Young girls like the excess of any quality. Without knowing, they want to suffer, to suffer they must exaggerate; they like to have loud chords struck on them.

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

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable. If you and I were capable of being altogether house-trained and made jolly, we should be nicer people, but not writers.

Raids are slightly constipating.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.

But complex people are never certain that they are not crooks, never certain their passports are quite in order, and are, therefore, unnerved by the slightest thing.