I'd write of people and places like I knew, and I'd make my characters talk everyday English; and I'd let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I'd give them a chance, Anne--I'd give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men the world, I suppose, but you'd have to go a long piece to find them...But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing, Anne.

Nathan always believed his wife was trying to poison him but he didn't seem to mind. He said it made life kind of exciting.

We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts.

True friends are always together in spirit.

Cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just when you especially want them to be good.

Which would you rather be if you had the choice--divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?

That's one of the things we learn as we grow older -- how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty.