If there were no such creatures as minstrel-maidens, it would be necessary to invent them.

A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.

Conversation! Supple sentences, with first and second meanings and overtones beyond, outrageous challenges with cleverly planned slip-points, rebuttals of elegant brevity; deceptions and guiles, patient explanations of the obvious, fleeting allusions to the unthinkable. As a preliminary, the conversationalist must gauge the mood, the intelligence and the verbal facility of the company. To this end, a few words of pedantic exposition often prove invaluable.

Somebody else's ignorance is bliss.

There was a writer in the '20s called Christopher Morley, who I remember a little bit of, who had some influence on me, but I couldn't tell you what it was.

An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.

Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.