Everything in a story should be credible.

Afraid? I can dodge folly without backing into fear.

As between the intolerable and the merely distasteful, I must choose the latter.

It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.

God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.

If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.

I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.