The best of our fiction is by novelists who allow that it is as good as they can give, and the worst by novelists who maintain that they could do much better if only the public would let them.

Why can't you fly now, mother?" "Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way." "Why do they forget the way?" "Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.

The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.

For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded.

I've sometimes thought . . . that the difference between us and the English is that the Scotch are hard in all other respects but soft with women, and the English are hard with women but soft in all other respects.

I am the best there ever was!

In time they could not even fly after their hats. Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.