... in the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language.

The world of the egotist is, inevitably, a narrow world, and the boundaries of self are limited to the close horizon of personality.... But, within this horizon, there is room for many attributes that are excellent.

Knowledge, like experience, is valid in fiction only after it has dissolved and filtered down through the imagination into reality.

He who demands little gets it.

The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions.

To a thrifty theologian, bent on redemption with economy, there are few points of ethics too fine-spun for splitting.

Given two tempers and the time, the ordinary marriage produces anarchy.