there is no truly honest autobiography.

... Washington was not only an important capital. It was a city of fear. Below that glittering and delightful surface there is another story, that of underpaid Government clerks, men and women holding desperately to work that some political pull may at any moment take from them. A city of men in office and clutching that office, and a city of struggle which the country never suspects.

McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business.

Of one thing the reader can be certain: the more easily anything reads, the harder it has been to write.

there is something shameful about the death of a play. It does not die with pity, but contempt. A book may fail, but who is there to know it? It dies and is buried, and is decently interred on the bookseller's shelf; but the play dies to laughter, to scorn and disdain.

Girls inevitably grew into women, but something of the boy persisted in every man.

It was said of Miss Letitia that when money came into her possession it went out of circulation.