A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy.

The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.

She had eyes like strange sins.

She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.

It's fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their vocational education often has to be learned all over again after they leave school and college. On the other hand, they have open quick minds and if their education has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of a more rigid training.

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

It is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be in the grasp of superficially educated people.