The preface is the most important part of a book. Even reviewers read a preface.

Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.

I had always imagined that Cliché was a suburb of Paris, until I discovered it to be a street in Oxford.

The detective story is the normal recreation of noble minds.

Any stigma, as the old saying is, will serve to beat a dogma.

People who jump to conclusions rarely alight on them.

The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender