Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another agewhen so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order.

for my own purpose, I defined the art of fiction as experience illuminated.

What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.

Nothing is more consuming, or more illogical, than the desire for remembrance.

Nothing in life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it.

As far back as I remember, long before I could write, I had played at making stories. But not until I was seven or more, did I begin to pray every night, "O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!"

it is wiser to be conventionally immoral than unconventionally moral. It isn't the immorality they object to, but the originality.