If our sex life were determined by our first youthful experiments, most of the world would be doomed to celibacy. In no area of human experience are human beings more convinced that something better can be had only if they persevere.

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.

In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.

Of all the things that human beings did together, the sexual act was the one with the most various of reasons.

The world is full of people who have lost faith: politicians who have lost faith in politics, social workers who have lost faith in social work, schoolteachers who have lost faith in teaching and, for all I know, policemen who have lost faith in policing and poets who have lost faith in poetry. It's a condition of faith that it gets lost from time to time, or at least mislaid.

Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.

Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because the chief actor is never there to explain it.