Each piece of dialogue MUST be "something happening". . .The "amusing" for its OWN sake should above all be censored. . .The functional use of dialogue for the plot must be the first thing in the writer's mind. Where functional usefulness cannot be established, dialogue must be left out.

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.

Dogs are a habit, I think.

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

Forgiveness should be an act, but this is a state with him.

rudeness to Mrs. Dosely was like dropping a pat of butter on to a hot plate - it slid and melted away.

What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.