I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.

A foul-mouthed oaf, a drunken laborer lying in a drain, a beaten wife with blackened eyes and torn clothes, cannot be made romantic to a child who sees how other children suffer from bad-tempered parents, from drunken fathers to termagant mothers.

I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.

It was as dark as the inside of a cabinet minister.

It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.

Remember I'm an artist. And you know what that means in a court of law. Next worst to an actress

I write the big scenes first, that is, the scenes that carry the meaning of the book, the emotional experience.