Most of the pleasure of making a book would go if it held nothing to be shared by other people. I would write for a few dozen people, and sometimes it seems that I do so, but I would not write for no-one.

At a certain point my novels set. They set just as hard as that jam jar. And then I know they are finished.

We none of us talk to people as we do behind their backs.

Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth,' said his cousin. 'But we seem to have no other.

A plot is like the bones of a person, not interesting like expression, or signs of experience, but the support of the whole.

People have never lost what they think they have.

Real charity and real ability never to condemn-the one real virtue-is so often the result of a waking experience that gives a glimpse of what lies beneath things.