What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.

Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.

But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?" "That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.

No government can act in advance of the moral will of the people.

Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one.

I don't see why escapist literature shouldn't also be a work of art.

Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility.