There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels before luncheon

Art is for [the Irish] inseparable from artifice: of that, the theatre is the home. Possibly, it was England made me a novelist.

All good dialogue perhaps deals with something unprecedented.

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.

Yes, writing a novel, my boy, is like driving pigs to market - you have one of them making a bolt down the wrong lane; another won't get over the right stile.

What I have found is, anything one keeps hidden should now and then be hidden somewhere else.